"Cucumber season," the summer months when Czech city dwellers head off to their vacation cottages, can make it hard to rustle up a high-profile crowd, which perhaps explains why the PR for the recent celebration of a new menu at restaurant Dinitz was enthusiastic almost to the point of desperation. However, as it included the opportunity to sample the restaurant's wine and items off of the menu, I agreed to meet a friend there and check it out.

When I arrived, groups of intent young businesspeople on cell phones paced in front of the open door, and I headed down into the restaurant, where a harpist played over the din of small talk and a buffet offered gourmet finger food. I had been told that some of Prague's local celebrities might be at the party, so I kept an eye out. That girl — the one with the ridiculously long legs and orange shoes with fluff at the toes — she must be someone, right?

My friend was late, so I lurked by the cheesecake squares, people-watching. A grandfatherly man in a plaid short-sleeve shirt took pictures of a couple feeding each other cake. Perhaps the least hip man in the bar, he looked like my kind of guy. I introduced myself, and found out that he and his colleague, a no-nonsense woman in a similar plaid short-sleeve shirt, were there as representatives for Czech society magazine Stastny´ Jim.

"How are you enjoying yourself?" I asked the woman.

She peered sharply over her half-moon glasses attached by a string around her neck.

"A terrible party. Nobody's here," she said briskly, and took a swig of wine. "After the film festival at Karlovy Vary, everything is slower. Cucumber season. Everyone goes to recover at their cottages."

I looked at the girl with the fluffy orange shoes and the other shiny people around her who had just been declared nobody.

The reporter relented. "Well, see that man over there, in the red shirt? That's the famous conductor Felix Slovácek. Last weekend, he and his wife Dáda Patrasová — she's an actress — were in Berlin for the big celebration of Joe Jackson's 75th birthday. The whole Jackson family was there."

"Even Michael and Janet?" I asked.

"Well, except them. But even Dáda is not here tonight. She is also out at their cottage."

As she set off to speak with the conductor, the photographer beckoned me to lean closer. "The food is good, the wine is good," he whispered. "And I say, if there is good food and good wine, then there is good party!" He smiled beatifically and as he excused himself to go take more pictures, I saw my friend waving as she came down the steps into the restaurant.

"Oooh, this looks nice," she said. "What do you think so far?"

I looked around at all the noncelebrities, at the harpist who was packing up, and then at my full glass of wine and the mound of cheesecake squares that cucumber season — and the celebrities' absence — had left for me to eat.