Priorities
Last night I had a quiet dinner alone at the restaurant next door to my dorm, here in Prague 2. It had stopped raining by the time I went to dinner, but despite that, the weather had been pretty lousy, so I wasn't feeling like doing much. Plus, I thought it best to stay close to my room in case the heavens should once more decide to drench the city.
Like my previous summer in Prague, my infatuation with Czech food ebbs and flows. To me more precise, four years ago it rapidly peaked, then plummeted, provoking a roller coaster of reactions that led me to make my sole foray into vegetarianism about halfway through the summer. (There's only so much roast pork one can eat before one wants nothing to do with meat in all its various forms.)
This time around, it's been somewhat similar. My enthusiasm for Czech food was pretty high when I arrived; after all, I hadn't had anything approaching authentic Czech cuisine since I last went to the Czech restaurant in Chicago about a year ago, and it had been four years since I had last been in the Czech Republic (and about three and a half years since I abandoned vegetarianism and became omnivorous once more).
And so it began. I had the national meal -- veproknedlozeli (pork, dumplings and sauerkraut) -- at my first meal, with a couple of tankards of beer. And it continued. Have you ever craved smazeny syr (fried cheese)? I was by about the fourth or fifth day in Prague, since I hadn't managed to find any yet. Mmm. Then there was the pork schnitzel, roast duck, sausage, goulash. Good stuff, although it pales in comparison to Hungarian goulash. As does every other pretender claiming the title of goulash. All washed down with a stein or two of excellent Czech beer.
After a couple of weeks of that, though, it starts to get wearisome. I mean, how much fried cheese can one person eat before it gets old? (Answer: about three meals.)
Anyway, so in a quest for vegetables, etc., I steered clear of the traditionally Czech and Central European food last night. I ordered a cup of garlic soup (OK, that's technically a Czech dish, but it's not fried and there's no pork in it) and a small Greek salad, both of which were quite tasty. And to drink? A beer. (Oddly enough, I don't know that I could ever tire of Czech beer, at least not here.)
Altogether, my bill, with tip, came to a whopping 120 crowns (for reference $1 is approximately 25 Kc), or just a shade under $5. Not bad at all. In fact, that's perhaps comparable to similar fare at a restaurant or cafe in the U.S., though probably a little cheaper.
But the striking thing, and the belabored and delayed point of this anecdote, was the composition of the bill. Before tip, it cost 109 Kc, inclusive of taxes. But the breakdown went thusly:
Salad: 55 Kc
Soup: 35 Kc
Beer: 19 Kc(!)
You can understand why I drink so much beer. It's per local custom and culture, but it's also literally the cheapest beverage on the menu. A beer (.5 L) will typically cost about 20 Kc, whereas a non-alcoholic beverage, say water (.33 L) will normally run almost twice that, somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 Kc.
Not to mention, the beer tastes a hell of a lot better.
Like my previous summer in Prague, my infatuation with Czech food ebbs and flows. To me more precise, four years ago it rapidly peaked, then plummeted, provoking a roller coaster of reactions that led me to make my sole foray into vegetarianism about halfway through the summer. (There's only so much roast pork one can eat before one wants nothing to do with meat in all its various forms.)
This time around, it's been somewhat similar. My enthusiasm for Czech food was pretty high when I arrived; after all, I hadn't had anything approaching authentic Czech cuisine since I last went to the Czech restaurant in Chicago about a year ago, and it had been four years since I had last been in the Czech Republic (and about three and a half years since I abandoned vegetarianism and became omnivorous once more).
And so it began. I had the national meal -- veproknedlozeli (pork, dumplings and sauerkraut) -- at my first meal, with a couple of tankards of beer. And it continued. Have you ever craved smazeny syr (fried cheese)? I was by about the fourth or fifth day in Prague, since I hadn't managed to find any yet. Mmm. Then there was the pork schnitzel, roast duck, sausage, goulash. Good stuff, although it pales in comparison to Hungarian goulash. As does every other pretender claiming the title of goulash. All washed down with a stein or two of excellent Czech beer.
After a couple of weeks of that, though, it starts to get wearisome. I mean, how much fried cheese can one person eat before it gets old? (Answer: about three meals.)
Anyway, so in a quest for vegetables, etc., I steered clear of the traditionally Czech and Central European food last night. I ordered a cup of garlic soup (OK, that's technically a Czech dish, but it's not fried and there's no pork in it) and a small Greek salad, both of which were quite tasty. And to drink? A beer. (Oddly enough, I don't know that I could ever tire of Czech beer, at least not here.)
Altogether, my bill, with tip, came to a whopping 120 crowns (for reference $1 is approximately 25 Kc), or just a shade under $5. Not bad at all. In fact, that's perhaps comparable to similar fare at a restaurant or cafe in the U.S., though probably a little cheaper.
But the striking thing, and the belabored and delayed point of this anecdote, was the composition of the bill. Before tip, it cost 109 Kc, inclusive of taxes. But the breakdown went thusly:
Salad: 55 Kc
Soup: 35 Kc
Beer: 19 Kc(!)
You can understand why I drink so much beer. It's per local custom and culture, but it's also literally the cheapest beverage on the menu. A beer (.5 L) will typically cost about 20 Kc, whereas a non-alcoholic beverage, say water (.33 L) will normally run almost twice that, somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 Kc.
Not to mention, the beer tastes a hell of a lot better.
posted by Alexander Dubcek | 08:24
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