Sunday 27 February 2011

Bearing all just outside of Prague




This august establishment, in Klokocna, a village about 30 minutes drive south east of Prague has quite a reputation. But be warned, its a firm favourite with the locals and they travel for miles ( I should say kilometres ) to try the tasty fare of the Sapikova family, so booking is essential.

I have to say that the immediate countryside around Prague suffers from a dearth of restaurants worth driving to. I am usually so disappointed with what is put on their tables, they don't even get review space; yet alone any praise. The Sapikova establishment interested me for two reasons; firstly the head of the family has apparently cooked at Prague Castle for some of the great and the good and secondly, for a week or so in February, bear was on the menu. Yes, that's right bear.

Now in England, I suspect that even if you could get the bear past the Health and Safety gestapo squad, you would end up being picketed and having your windows smashed by some animal rights campaigners. Which is why I cannot remember AA Gill or Michael Winner writing about bear enhanced menus. Well guys, this was my big chance to pull off a review "coup" and write about the eating the brutes.

A couple of my colleagues went for bear soup, which looked pretty boring, but they pronounced themselves satisfied.

I went for the full monty of Bear a la Russe; bear Russian style, which seemed to be accompanied by some pretty Czech looking dumplings. As you can imagine, old bruin is a pretty tough beast to render into a state in which the human can chew and digest it. Sapikova's solution is the pretty obvious one of slow cooking and then, smothering it with a rich sauce to, how shall I put this correctly, take the bearishness away.

Well they pulled it off - just. I could have been eating the poorest cut of beef, horse, aged venison or possibly even ostrich. It had a gamey tang, but the rich brown sauce and my hunger, made it edible. Would I recommend to the ladies - definitely not and one certainly needs to be a lover of well hung game to derive any pleasure at all from the dish ( leaving aside the ethical considerations, which others are far better equipped than I, to comment on. )

A robust looking chef, whom I assume was the leading light of the Sapikova family, rolled into the main dining room as we were halfway through our meal. I assumed he would work the room and at least, enquire how bruin was going down. Not a bit of it; he sat own at a table with some of his mates in the corner and apart from a couple of shifty looks around the room, I assume to check that none of the great and the good had strayed from Prague Castle to visit him, was completely anti-social.

So no picture of Night Rider being embraced by a fat chef; perhaps just as well as after the rather rich bruin, a bear hug might have had undesired results.

Worth a visit again ? The jury is still out.

Monday 21 February 2011

Dinner with Paul Day.........Sansho to take off shortly




Not able to try Dinner with Heston Blumenthal in London this week, I was still feeling miserable from Valentine's Dinner at Amici Miei, that only memorable for their outrageous bill, as commented below. However, a saviour was at hand. A call out of the blue from Paul Day, to invite me to sample the fare at his new lair in Prague, shortly to officially open its doors.

With blonde in tow, I duly turned up on Saturday evening to be warmly greeted by our host and his small collection of charming young staff. I left the food to Paul to select and he duly obliged with a degustation of numerous small courses. Outstanding were the pork ribs, cooked slowly and derived from some ancient breed that melted in the mouth; the surf and turf of stone fish and some very spicy thai style beef.

The house wines were worthy of a more distinguished title; a Cremant sparkling white that could have been mistaken for Champagne and very smooth red from the Languedoc Cote D'Or region. Restaurants in Prague so rarely get their house wines right, perhaps to encourage diners to go for the more expensive options. Not in this case, where I would have been happy to serve these two, at a private dinner party at home ( unless it included wine snobs ! ).

I look forward to the doors opening officially and revisiting some amazing dishes.

Tuesday 15 February 2011

Amici Miei - no friends of mine !



I am one of those people who make social arrangements at the last minute, so this Valentine's Day found all my favourite haunts in Prague booked out. Had often walked past the Amici Miei restaurant in Prague's old town and close to the much frequented Lamborghini Cafe in Vezenska Street. Looked at its website and it was generally impressed, but hard pressed to find any of my friends who had actually eaten there. That should have been warning enough, but with little time left to make a reservation for the evening I put doubts aside and risked it. Laziness is rarely rewarded and sure enough, I got what I guess was fully deserved.

Prague is a beautiful City and as well as the mass tourists who wander its old streets through all the seasons, it has a fair number of well heeled visitors from east and west. Pariska Street ( Prague's Bond Street ) can be seen bustling with wealthy Russians, rubbing shoulders with the local rich and affluent Westerners. But for all its sophistication, rip offs await the unwary. Taxi drivers who charge treble or more, currency exchanges that take more in commission than you can imagine and there are always new ways being dreamt up of parting people from large amounts of cash. The inappropriately named Amici Miei restaurant decided Valentine's Day was a good moment to boost their bottom line and hit me with a bill, that I might have expected at the new Heston Blumenthal's new place at the Mandarin Oriental in London.

To start with they dreamt up a special menu for the day, which the maitre d later admitted was priced up considerably higher than normal daily dishes. I started with a mediocre seafood salad, poorly presented and lacking in any real excitement. Followed that by a Dover Sole; it was fresh enough and only slightly over-cooked but the roast potatoes with it were soggy and clearly had sat under a warmer for some time before making their way to our table. The desert, described as warm chocolate cake turned out to be a very small and again unmemorable souffle - not too bad but worth 15 Euro ? No way.

But the serious rip off came with the drinks, with over 20 Euros a glass being charged for a very standard house champagne and a very small glass ( 0.2 dl ) of house red wine, barely drinkable 12 Euros a glass.

The end result was a bill of well over 300 Euros; at least double what it should have been for a meal and drinks of this quality.

No friends of mine and not suprisingly, less than half full. The other denizens of Prague have been caught before ?