Our second night of traditional Czech food (at the same little restaurant, same little table) was an up night for me, a down one for Louisa. I had another mixed green salad to start, and Louisa had shopsky, which, based on my
extensive research, seems to be a Bulgarian specialty. It was tomatoes, cucumbers, and bell peppers, chopped up, topped with a vinaigrette, and covered in salty cheese. (No pics of the shopsky from that night, but scroll down to check out Cafe Louvre's version.)
For my main course, I chose the Czech plate. This turned out to be three kinds of meat, plus a kielbasa-like sausage, served with a gravy and the traditional Czech dumplings. Now, they may know their way around a killer potato pancake, but the dumplings in "Czech lands" (as our guide to Terezin called it) leave something to be desired. I bought a "Czech Cookery" book on our last day in Prague, and it explained that the dumplings are essentially boiled rolls; one variety made of potato flour, and one of wheat flour. (Here's
a link to a recipe I found online.)
However, I also got two kinds of cabbage (yay!), and Louisa was kind enough to grace me with one of her potato pancakes.
From left to right on the top of the plate, you've got potato dumplings, wheat dumplings, and the potato pancake. From left to right on the bottom, sausage, ham, beef, and a pork chop hiding. Also, the cabbage!
Louisa got something that was named mysteriously (so mysteriously, in fact, that I cannot recall it), which turned out to be a veal chop topped with ham, white asparagus, and cheese.
One note about most of this food - it was very salty. We noticed that the traditional food tended to be either very salty, very sweet, or bland. The condiments brought to the table helped alleviate this somewhat, but it was a definite trend.
The next morning, we got up early (sunrise was our goal, but we didn't quite make it) to walk across the Charles Bridge in its relatively empty early-morning state. It was a drizzly day, so our fellow walkers were equipped with umbrellas...this is a view of the bridge, looking back toward Stare Mesto.
We had a destination all planned out, a cafe in Mala Strana that was highly rated by The HG2, and which opened at 8 AM. However, when we got there at 8:30, it still wasn't open. Grrrrr...so, being all European and go-with-the-flow (at least for the two weeks we were on vacation), we found a restaurant called Sqaure, right around the corner from St. Niklaus. It's owned by the Kampa Group, the sort of Steve Hanson restaurant group of Prague. Louisa had hot porridge with fruit, and I had the continental breakfast - brioche toast, ham, parmesan, jam, and butter. It was good (Illy capuccinos to drink, BTW), but way overpriced.
We hopped on the tram to head up to Prague Castle, where we spent an excellent morning looking at art, churches, architecture, and learning about the defenstration that precipitated the Thirty Years' War. Excellent times.
After the Castle, we took the tram back down to the funicular, and rode up to the halfway point. There's a restaurant and a cafe there, and we thought it would be a neat (if hopelessly touristy - but we were tourists, after all) place to have our last lunch in Prague.
The cafe only served drinks, so we opted for Restaurant Nebozizek, which had glass walls and amazing views. To start, I had a cucumber, tomato, and avocado salad, dressed with vinegar, oil, red onion, and "pickles!"
Did I MENTION how much I loved all the cucumber?
Louisa had a delicious (but really not photogenic), creamy salmon soup to start, and then another version of the arugula, parm, ham and pear salad...
This one had some green leaf lettuce mixed in with the arugula, but it was still pretty good.
I had a duck dish...duck breast with purple cabbage, white cabbage gnocchi, roasted apples, and crispy potatoes. I really enjoyed it, and it was so pretty!
We were pretty full, plus we knew we'd be having an early dinner, so we opted for coffee only after the meal, and then headed outside to take some pictures of the view.
That's Prague Castle, with Mala Strana just in front of it and the funicular stop in the foreground.
That's Tyn Church in Old Town Square!
For our last dinner in Prague, we went back to Cafe Louvre for some more hot chocolate and some quality time with our books. Louisa got ghoulash (her husband had been begging her to do so for days - every time they talked, it was ghoulash this and ghoulash that), and I decided to go for some pasta. But first, SHOPSKY! And bread.
The pasta was billed as "spaghetti with garlic, cheese, chiles, and Italian bacon." It had all those things, but also tasted mysteriously un-Italian. Very odd. Not bad, just not Italian.
And so, with a final cup of hot chocolate and a tram ride back to Namesti Republicky, we ended our time in Prague...we left the next morning for Strasbourg, and my continuing chronicle can be found
over here!
Edited by Megan Blocker, 24 October 2006 - 04:46 PM.
