In which we drink lots of beer. And eat pig’s knee.
The good part about Prague’s food is that it goes perfectly with beer. The bad thing is that it is notoriously short on veggies and very heavy. To my untrained stomach, it is similar to German food, but…different. There is always a ton of meat. It is best to stick with beef or pork. I ventured over to chicken for one meal, which was a mistake. I also accidentally ordered the largest piece of pork I’ve ever seen short of an entire pig at a pig roast. And apparently it was a pig’s knee. What can I say, I liked the sauce description. Turns out eating pig’s knee is common in the Czech Republic (and Germany for that matter) and it doesn’t taste half bad.
We like the goulashes a lot, and my favorite meal was beef in “candle sauce” (a creamy, lemony, cranberry type sauce).
I don’t mind the sauerkraut, which shocks me. Sean keeps trying to tell me that sauerkraut counts as a vegetable, but I don’t buy it. Maybe the red cabbage. There are always a lot of potatoes in some form. The kvednicky (dumplings) are delicious and soaks up all of the beers we drink.
Look, veggies!
For the last two months, we have been mostly in countries that feature wine as their specialty. I forgot how much I loved beer until we arrived in Prague. It had been a while since I had a good beer, one from the tap with a thick, foamy head on the top. That seems to be par for the course in Prague.
Beer is everywhere in Prague, and due to European’s apparent reluctance to drink water out of the tap, indeed sometimes cheaper than water. They even have beer vending machines.
Did you know that there is a beer in the Czech Republic that is called Budweiser (or Budvar in Czech) and it is much more delicious than Budweiser at home? I did not know this until we had some in Paris. They are two different companies. It is not fair that we get stuck with the crappy Budweiser. We have had some giant, foamy Budvars since our arrival.
Budvar’s biggest competitor in the Czech Republic is Pilsner Urquell, a beer Americans are more familiar with. The original Pilsner Urquell brewery is in Plzen, which is an hour and forty minutes from Prague by train. We ventured to the brewery, and saw the bottling process, tasted hops, malt and barley, saw the copper vats where the beer is brewed for 5 weeks, and tasted an unfiltered beer from their special cellar. We enjoy drinking cask beer at home, which is served at a higher temperature. Perhaps that is why we enjoyed the Czech beer, because it is served at a higher temperature than most Americans are used to. The best beers here have been the ones on draught served unfiltered and unpasteurized. Apparently they have more vitamin B that way, which is a bonus. I am probably lacking essential vitamins due to the lack of vegetables.
Here are our three favorite places we drank beer in Prague:
(1) Breaking my normal rule of no chains, we ate and drank one night at The Pub, which is a Czech chain with several locations in Prague and smaller cities. At the Pub, you can pour yourself an unfiltered Pilsner Urquell from the tap at your table. The computerized screen automatically displays how much beer you have poured, and also shows your tally on a large screen for the whole room to see. The screen displays the top ten tallys for the restaurant, as well as a separate top ten for all of the Pub’s locations. Our immediate thought was, [our friend] Stayduhar could totally crush this competition. As a table of two, we never made it to the top ten of all of the locations, but we are proud to say we stayed on the board for the Praha 1 location. Thank goodness for public transportation.
(2) On our way back to our hotel from metro after our visit to The Pub, we happened across a little bar up the street from our hotel. You want to go in? I said. Sure, Sean replied. What’s one more beer? It was immediately obvious this place did not get many tourists. Lit by candlelight, with David Bowie in the background, you could tell that this was the type of place people came to chill. And chill people did, including the people at the table behind us, who were passing a joint around their table. Spying the unfiltered beers on the menu, we gave more specificity than normal when we ordered, requesting two beers, large, unfiltered. Right, the bartender said. So you mean two beers. Regular beers. They were large, foamy, and delicious. Sean’s one turned into two. When we went to pay, we misheard the bartender and thought he said 180 Czech crowns, an amount which would have been around $8.50 for three half liter beers. No, said the bartender. I said 108. (Around $5 USD). 180? He laughed. That would be expensive. Right. Expensive.
(3) I would have to put the Pivovarsky Klub on the list for its awesome name, even if it didn’t turn out to be as cool as it was. A little off the normal tourist track in Karlin, it was visited by Anthony Bourdain in the Prague episode, and also mentioned on the blog SpottedbyLocals.
Somewhat inadvertently, we also ended up visiting its sister restaurant Pivovarsky Dum, which is a microbrewery.
The beer is great at both places, but we preferred the food at the Pivovarsky Klub. The Pivovarsky Klub has six beers on draught. At least one will be from its sister restaurant, and most of the others are a good sampling of other types of Czech beer besides Pilsner Urquell and Budvar. They also have tons of bottled beers from all over the world. (The American representatives, if you are curious, are Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada). This wide variety of beer might not be unusual in the United States, but in Europe, there is typically only have one or two choices on tap, making ordering beer as simple as saying, two beers, please.
Yes there is only several local flavors of beer and typically light beer. Dark beer seems to be more of an Irish/English adventure. In many places in Eastern Europe I have been people would stick to the local beer produced around the block. Just a habit maybe and because it is cheaper and fresher.
As far as pigs go another specialty is pig ears and ankles/hoofs. In fact as meat goes in Europe one can order anything from lamb’s head to cleaned intestines.
Thanks Amy. It is about 1pm here and I have four kids under my supervision…. but my mind is wandering to BEER. I want several RIGHT NOW! I’ll wait till happy hour, but not a moment later. YUMMO!
Consequently, speaking of beer, I have a new karaokee song when get home. I’m sure you’ll LOVE it 😉
Beer vending machines?! That’s awesome! That is weird about the Budvar…you’re right, it’s not fair we get stuck with Budweiser. This also makes me crave a beer…
Me, too! And I don’t even drink beer! I must say, Anton, that the dark beer shown is the one that looks the most appealing to me ~ must be the little bit of Irish/English I have in me. 😉
I love beer. I could go for one right now, but unfortunately it is not necessarily kosher in the office environment. As for the pig knees, my mom would tell me that my grandfather Hogan would eat pig feet and head cheese. Hmmmmm. Still not sure what head cheese is . . . I should google it. Have a fabulous local beer for me!