best meal ever

My roommate is moving soon so we decided last night to go out for a traditional Czech meal. On a somewhat cryptic recommendation, we trapesed around Vysehrad until finally finding the place hidden on a side street near the river. I want to say it was called Restaurace Podskalska, or something close, for those taking travel guide notes.

We walked into the restaurant, down a few steps and were greeted by a thick cloud of cigarette smoke and a waitress with dyed hair and an unusual, somewhat gritty Czech accent.

Kate can certainly hold her own speaking Czech, but we were guessing a little about what to order, mainly going off of what we had heard was traditional Czech food and looking up every second word in my handy pocket dictionary.

Perhaps the most notable experience of the meal was our appetizer. We could discern something about toast and tartarsky (or close to it), and Kate had heard that was a good popular Czech dish to get us started. So we ordered it and two velky pivos (big beers... that's my Czechlish for you), and when the dish came, we dove in.

First was a few pieces of thick, crispy fried buttery toast. Next to it came a plate of some kind of meaty spread, which I promptly slathered on the toast and sunk my teeth into. It was savory and rich and oniony and delicious. Meanwhile, I was musing on the texture. Hmm, I said to Kate, this looks strangely like uncooked meat or perhaps ground burger.... Her eyes became as wide as saucers and she stopped chewing mid-bite. I watched her put it together in her mind. Tartarsky. Steak Tartar. Raw meat. Friend in Brussels ate it and was sick for days. That promptly ended our enjoyment of the appetizer. Guess it helps to know what you are ordering, right?

We got much luckier with the entrees: an herbed chicken cooked to tender perfection, breaded and fried pork and potato wedges that would make anyone rethink the potentials of potatoes. It was excellent - perhaps one of the best meals of my life and undoubtedly in Prague. The atmosphere, the food, the waitress, it all made it feel like we had truly stumbled upon a traditional Czech meal.