Pasta, crępes and sandwiches — oh my, no!

Go to watch crowds idle around Jungmannovo náměstí, hang out on the deck in warmer months, stop in even for a quick cup of coffee. But don't visit Café Jungmann for anything more.

Aside from an envious location and inviting patio, it's a purely utilitarian establishment. Everything functions at an adequate level. Décor fills the room, nothing more. Although drawing from French and Italian recipes, menu items here barely range beyond fundamental presentations. Straying from the most basic plates, such as "filled bread" (i.e. sandwiches), only invites disappointment.

But that's as good as it gets. Grilled pork fillet with pepper crust is scored deeply before cooking. Thus any fat and juice the meat may have stored at one point splatters uselessly onto the grill, lending the finished product a greasy skin. Unfortunate diners are stuck with a dripping, withered slab of pepper-flavored pork jerky — not a pleasant experience.

For the most part, Café Jungmann serves up the kind of fare you expect from Midwestern truck stops in the United States (except for the wine, cappuccino and cobblestone square, of course) — passable in a pinch, but not worth a special trip. On one visit, the soup of the day turned out to be bean with evidence of tomato and fleeting glimpses of ham, covered by a whopping measure of pepper. It's as if some practical jokester of a prep cook unscrewed the lid on the shaker and waited for an unsuspecting chef to season the broth.

The spaghetti with spinach pesto and Parmesan is a flaccid, overcooked glob laced with utterly monotonous pesto that whispers of boxes and freezers and heavy processing. Any other suggestion of flavor comes from menacingly sour Parmesan, fortunately applied with a sparing hand.

Crępes are Café Jungmann's other supposed strength: Galettes with goat cheese and walnuts featuring nice, eggy pancakes folded over a perfectly proportioned filling. The combination starts with a mild, slightly tart cheese and should be followed by a nutty undertow. But there was a font of bitterness hidden in my order, the product of dry and gritty walnuts that crumbled unpleasantly and exposed their age in an ill-tempered astringency.

Still, the place draws a steady crowd, with both locals and tourists lingering over a glass of wine or warm drink, happily settling for a marginal course or two.