OK, food porn lovers.  Today is your day.  We met our food tour, A Taste of Prague, just across the street from the St. Hastalska Church. The English translation of Hastalska is Castullus.  Must be a local saint, certainly not any of the many that I’m familiar with from New Mexico, Spain, and Italy.  There were four couples in the group.  The two women from Minnesota and Iowa had husbands who were off playing golf.  The other couples were from Philly and Dallas.  Karolina, the guide, was enjoying some time off from her baby.  She is on part of her three year maternity leave, and unless she goes back to her regular job, the money she earns guiding tours doesn’t decrease what she gets paid on maternity leave.  She receives a stipend each month.  It does gradually decrease over time, giving some incentive to return to work before the maximum allotted time.  Her English is perfect as is the English of most of the people we had encountered.  She had spent some time in England and Australia. After introductions, Karolina passed around shots of slivovitz, the traditional plum brandy and we headed off.

Our first stop was Lokal, where we had eaten yesterday, but that was fine.  We had many of the same dishes as last night, but I got pictures.  The Gulaš (goulash) was even better today with a little more bell pepper flavor. The fried cheese was just as good as last night.  The décor in Lokal is 1980’s under Soviet occupation.

After the beer, I began to lose the names of the restaurants.  Our next stop was in an arcade off the main street.  It was outside of a meat shop Naše Maso and a sandwich shop Sisters.  Karolina went into each and brought an assortment of things for us to try.  The first sandwich was thinly sliced beef maybe a corned beef on a slaw of some sort.  The second was a thin slice of Prague ham on potato salad which was delicious.  Then from the meat shop we had a fantastic slice of meatloaf on bread and some steak tartare. Both were great.

Next we walked to another restaurant, which was located in a former bank with marble counters. There we had some more beer, this time a real dark that I enjoyed, and some excellent schnitzel and some pulled meat that might have been pork neck and pickled vegetables.

And then we walked.  Back towards the Republic Square.  On the way, I looked up and saw big Nazi flags flying over an imposing old building. Karolina said not to worry, they were filming a WWII movie.  As we got closer we saw that the street signs were in French and there were tanks, sandbags and Dusenbergs around.

 

When we got back to Republic Square, we caught a tram to the Karlin neighborhood where we went to our last two stops.  The first was at a bakery for traditional sweet kolache, with cherries and poppy seeds.  Those were very good, but inside there were very fancy pastries including what is known as Doberge in New Orleans.  These are apparently more traditional Hungarian pastries.  Now I’m really looking forward to Budapest. I didn’t even take a picture of the kolache.

Our last stop was at a Michelin recommended restaurant named Eska. New Czech cuisine with foams and freeze dried things.  Very good.  We started with yet more wine and wood fired oven baked bread which was great. Some potato “soup” made with a potato foam, fish, and with ash baked new potatoes and caramelized butter and kefir.

Then a roasted chicken dish with grilled cabbage.

Followed by two desserts, a bread pudding made with a gingery bread and served with a plum sauce and finally a puff pastry filled with a loose meringue.

From the restaurant we caught a taxi back to the apartment.  BJ worked on her puzzles and I walked back to a sheet music store that I had seen.  They had lots of quartets which I didn’t know including Janacek, Gounod, and some by the prisoners from Terezin (see yesterday’s post).  I bought the Janacek to try.

Needless to say, there was no dinner tonight. The architectural tour of art deco buildings in Prague is tomorrow.  And maybe some of the usual tourist stuff like the astronomical clock tower and Wenceslas Square.