It's enough to make you drop a tear into your tom kha foie gras: For years, Prague's fine-dining scene has been dominated by Asian influences, with east-west "fusion" cooking — long outmoded elsewhere — the default style for many of the city's high-profile restaurants.

While the world's best food cities have been enjoying the dynamic flavors of locally produced seasonal ingredients, many Prague chefs have continued with intercontinentally imported dreamscapes that often resemble architectural structures more than anything you'd want to eat. Worse, such recipes lack all sense of where you are, as John McPhee might put it. Hybrid Thai-French cuisine from a Moravian chef in Malá Strana? Thanks anyway.

But even the wackiest fusion recipes can still taste delicious, and one of the best of the Asian-influenced restaurants used to be La Veranda, run by 2002's Czech chef of the year, Radek David. With a nod to changing tastes, David now has a new menu offering more European "market-style" recipes, predominantly in the French and Italian mode, though some Asian influences and David's inventive approach are still evident throughout the menu. In general, it's outstanding.

Cold appetizers include marinated tiger prawns with apples, a foie gras terrine with celery purée and Italian salume — Parma ham and bresaola — served with Parmesan, olives and ciabatta. Scallops stand out among the warm starters (as with many appetizers, larger portions are available as main courses): four buttery, almost quivering morsels of just-seared St. Jacques scallops, served with a creamy, deep-brown risotto fortified with the earthy flavor of black truffles. For balance, a sweet and tart port-and-red-wine reduction sauce lines the plate. It's fantastic.

Main courses witness more Italian and French touches: grilled Parmesan-stuffed canelloni and Nicoise calamari with barley, among others. Seafood also plays a major role on the new menu: In addition to the calamari, seabass and dorada fillets are listed. Another fish plate pairs thyme-scented grilled salmon with a salad of roast fennel, creating an aromatic combination that goes very well together. Less embraceable is the plate's humdrum, vinegar-laden cherry tomato chutney. And the topping of pitted black olives is way out of place here, earning a gigantic WTF?, followed by a gong sound.

Far more evenly outstanding is the plate of quail, two adorable little cuts of breast and thigh perfectly baked to a tender, herb-scented state somewhere between juicy and crispy. It's lip-licking good, a condition only improved by its accompanying risotto, this time flavored with chanterelles, and its nutmeg-scented white asparagus spears.

The wine list is equally upscale, though relatively limited. Among domestic bottles, the 2003 late harvest sauvignon blanc from Dobrá Vinice is a refreshing, well-balanced white with light cinnamon and strawberry notes in the bouquet, honey and melon in the mouth, with a pleasantly dry and relatively long finish. Aged in barriques, it also has a nice amount of oak, though not so much as to overwhelm delicate fish or poultry dishes.

Overall, the new La Veranda remains one of the best restaurants in the city, with the new menu a welcome change. Service is outstanding, yet informal; atmosphere is sleek and chic, if slightly cold. Unfortunately, we're still lacking an emphasis on local and seasonal ingredients. Which makes this a good time to get out the old soapbox: My dream is that a four-star restaurant like La Veranda would cook with predominantly Czech ingredients. If there is no Czech equivalent of bresaola, for example, why doesn't a great chef here work with a local farmer to produce one, instead of dragging something halfway across Europe?

And although seafood is delicious, much of it — like Atlantic cod and Chilean seabass — is overfished and obviously transported thousands of miles by the time it gets to Prague. Why don't four-star restaurants even attempt to do something with Czech trout, which is domestic, delicious and rich in omega-3 fatty acids? (You prefer French cuisine? M.F.K. Fisher, writing about one of her most memorable meals in Provence, recounted a truite au bleu. Look it up.)