Czech, Please: Prague’s Restaurant Revival

Czech, Please: Prague’s Restaurant Revival

Fixated on foreign foods in the giddy post-Communist years, Prague’s chefs are once again justly proud of their native cuisine

Restaurant Revival in Prague ’s restaurant revival is raising the profile of the local cuisine.
fullscreen By Alexander Lobrano in the Wall Street Journal

THE FIRST TIME I visited Prague, in 1988, I was smitten by the city in spite of its food, not because of it.

That initial, frosty night in the darkened city—Prague used its streetlights sparingly in those days—the air smelled of coal smoke and wet wool. On our way to dinner at U Pavouka (the Spider), we noticed a crowd of people gathered in front of a shop window. Curious, we jostled our way in and saw a little pyramid of canned Hungarian foie gras on a liner of blue velvet, flanked by several red-string bags of clementines and a couple of bunches of bananas—inaccessible luxuries. Dinner at U Pavouka, a touristy place recommended by the front desk of our hotel, was, well, filling. Thick potato soup garnished with canned mushrooms came in hollowed out loaves of bread, and then we were served trenchers of goulash with a puzzling muttony taste.

To be sure, there were some good things to be had: the dense and tangy rye bread, the fatty sausages from grill stands in Wenceslas Square, the ham—real Prague ham—and the beer. I even liked the houskové knedlíky, heavy doughy dumplings served with roasts to mop up their sauce. Still, the Czech table played a minor role in my early infatuation with the city

Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Prague is a place where people stop to read menus as they stroll its cobbled streets. Such curiosity may be an unremarkable reflex in most large Western cities, but for anyone who knew Prague during the days when it was the capital of Communist Czechoslovakia, the resurrection of the local restaurant scene continues to come as a delicious surprise.

Bankers and film directors (Prague has become a popular shoot location) order U.S.D.A. prime steaks and California Zinfandel at the sleek George Prime Steak, and several Italian restaurants—notably La Finestra in Cucina—outstrip the competition in my hometown, Paris. Television celebrity chef Zdeněk Pohlreich has a hit on his hands with Yamato, a very good sushi restaurant.

Last December, I had one of my best meals of the year in Prague, at La Degustation Bohême Bourgeoise. The food at this Michelin-starred table was stunningly good, but what really bowled me over was that it was Czech. A nutmeg-spiced pumpkin soup laced with Port came with a dollop of cream infused with the flavor of that incomparable Prague ham. Steamed catfish was dressed in a bracing flurry of thinly sliced radish and kohlrabi; a simple sauce made with brewer’s yeast packed a mighty umami punch.

“Eating in Prague began to change when we started to travel after 1989,” said chef Oldřich Sahajdák. He credits a stint at the Culinary Institute of America with teaching him a “U.S.-style service culture that’s less formal and more customer-centered than the stuffy formality that used to be prevalent in Prague restaurants.”

‘The resurrection of the local restaurant scene continues to come as a delicious surprise. ’

I spent much of my time in Prague in the early 1990s, and every time I went, my Czech friends proudly took me to the latest openings—places like a big Spanish-owned supermarket in the suburbs where you could buy frozen paella, and Prague’s first Tex-Mex restaurant. Praguers were on a roller-coaster ride of gastronomic novelty, eager to try everything they’d been deprived of for 45 years. “They might not be that good, but the cheeseburgers here mean that we’re part of the world again,” my friend Martin explained at the time.

Mr. Sahajdák’s own style started to simmer after he found a century-old cookbook, “Kuchařská Škola” (“Culinary School”), by Marie B. Svobodová, that had been published in 1894. “Predating the wars and communism, the recipes in this book were little miniatures of the Czech palate,” he said. “They encouraged me to try and create a modern Czech cuisine.”

Chef Jiří Štift, 40, of Essensia at the Mandarin Oriental Prague, began his culinary training in 1988. “From my reading, I knew that Prague had been an avid food city between the world wars, but my training was rote, just recipes from the one approved cookbook,” he said. “The teachers were more interested in economical cooking than good food, and the ingredients were very limited. I didn’t see veal for the first time until 1991.” Like many young chefs in post-Communist Prague, Mr. Štift cut his teeth in a hotel kitchen, and then he landed a job cooking on the Queen Elizabeth II. Now he runs a sophisticated two-speed menu of Asian and modern Czech cuisine. The latter runs to dishes like a satiny kulajda—chicken velouté garnished with potatoes, a poached egg and dill. “Today my goal is to use as much seasonal Czech produce in my kitchen as possible,” said Mr. Štift.

For younger Czechs such as Marek Šáda, 31, chef at Mlýnec restaurant, the fact that Czech cooking is finding a place in the world seems normal. “For me, it is part of the European family of kitchens, and when people try it, they like it,” said Mr. Šáda, who spent time cooking at Hospoda, a Czech-accented restaurant in New York.

Dlouhá street in Prague’s Old Town is one of the best places in the city to experience the new popularity of Czech cooking, at reasonable prices. Here, influential local restaurateur Tomáš Karpíšek’s Ambiente group, which also owns La Degustation Bohême Bourgeoise and Hospoda, has opened Lokál Dlouhá, a riff on the traditional Czech pub, and Naše Maso, a meat shop specializing in Czech-produced pork and beef, where butcher František Kšána Jr. makes delicious sausages and the best meat loaf I’ve ever tasted. Nearby, former food magazine editor Hana Michopulu ’s stylish storefront bistro, Sisters, specializes in chlebíčky, or traditional Czech open-face sandwiches, topped with combinations such as Prague ham with potato salad, and beets with goat cheese.

“Going to restaurants is still a privileged experience for most people in the Czech Republic,” noted Mr. Sahajdák, “but Czechs are interested in good food now, and we’re hungry for our own cooking again.”