A Day of Czech Food

Day 3 in Prague

Today we walked back over to Stare Mesto, past the Astronomical Clock, to take a four hour food tour with Taste of Prague.

Our group was all English speaking.  There was a family from Rockville, MD, two parents with their three adult children, a woman from Brisbane, Australia and us.  The leader of the tour was Martin Blum, a native of the Czech Republic who had moved to Austria as a young child, became a foodie and moved back to Prague.  We went to five restaurants to taste Czech cuisine.

We started at two places - Sisters Bistro and Nase Maso, an organic butcher shop (where Martin works)  and had the following:

Open face beet root purée with goat cheese and celery root salad sandwiches, Open face meatloaf sandwich (made of pork and beef), wiener sausage, and an Open face ground beef steak tartare sandwich.

We then moved on to Lokal, a Beer Pub and had:

Chicken schnitzel with potato salad, Ham and horse radish cream with pickled herring, marinated camembert style cheese, Beef Goulash, Communist coke (during the Communist regime they had to make their own and it has become kinda "retro - it tastes like Fanta Orange with vanilla) and Pilsner Urquell beer. 

Our next stop was Naso a Kobilha, a meat and donut place where we tasted:

Scotch eggs, a wonderful, sugared, custard doughnut (Martin taught us how to cut a custard donut without squeezing all the custard out), and a local craft beer.

Our last stop was Eska, an upscale, gourmet restaurant that served:

Rabbit liver pate, fermented plum soda, Burnt potato in ash with potato espuma, fermented red wheat with sous-vide egg and button mushrooms, and zemlovka-bread pudding with apples in espuma of vanilla and rum. 

We were fascinated by the tour.  Traditional Czech food is based on meat, potatoes or dumplings and wonderful but heavy sauces.  What many new chefs are trying to do in the Czech Republic is to make gourmet versions using the traditional Czech food.  Many of the traditional Czech foods disappeared from menus at restaurants when the Russians were in power.  All restaurants in the country were given the same recipes, served the same food that tasted the same and cost the same.

The food tour took us to a neighborhood of the city - the Karlin district - that we had not planned on visiting.  This area was devastated by floods in 2003 and has reestablished itself as an up and coming area much like Georgetown in DC.

So, we have a toilet story.

Our toilet is freakishly smart - it requires a remote control for complete operation.  The remote control (below) is attached magnetically to a plate on the wall.

This morning, Gerry, while sitting on it and trying to figure it out without reading the instructions, received a very unexpected surprise!  Here are the instructions!

Myra laughed for an hour!  

We decided to end our evening with a cocktail at the rooftop bar at our hotel.  The moon was full and absolutely stunning!  While our picture doesn't capture it perfectly, the moon is a giant orange orb in the sky over the beautiful city lights of Prague.  This Picture is for you Deb!

  What a beautiful way to end our evening!