Clearly, any conversation with the large egg could easily devolve into a confusing mess.

These are not really criticisms, mind you. In fact, it's almost refreshing to find so few integrated design elements in an age when restaurateurs often seek to achieve a conspicuous "look."

Food quality can be summed up in an order of roast beef with bacon. The seasoning was, on one visit, spot-on: surprisingly modest pinches of salt underscoring reasonably tame pepper — nothing more, nothing less. Bacon, flung over the top, added a smoky character. I asked for rare, and the kitchen responded with a close approximation, a rich and dark edge wrapped around a ruby center. Thus, in many places, the meat was beautifully tender and densely flavored. Other parts were so stiffened by cartilage and other tough chunks they stubbornly resisted incision by anything metal. The tines of my fork bent attempting to hold the cut in place.

Even better, U Slavíků's "wild" boar with briar sauce contrasts charred meat and a sharp recoil of pepper with a dense, quince-flavored sauce that captures the potent allure of sweet-tart fruit. For 150 Kč ($7), it's a beautiful dish.

The rest of the menu attempts to satisfy diners in search of hearty, but not necessarily memorable, comfort meals. The cheese skewer starter is nothing more than a redundant arrangement of beer-quelling curd sandwiched between sadly addled grapes. Sausage in red wine — another skewered starter — pits timid meat against undressed red and white cabbage.

Soups are often inelegant, home-style concoctions. Starch holds together a gray, gloppy potato soup bailed out by large handfuls of pepper. Unlike the rich, cream-based versions familiar to Western families, the base is pasty, like a roux extended with cubes of potatoes and carrots. The kitchen rejects French onion soup in favor of a golden chicken stock to which onions have been tossed in at the last moment, so they remain fresh, crisp and pungent. Globs of all-too-mild cheese suspended in the broth contribute nothing more than an unpleasant, caulky texture. In fact, the soup fares much better without.

In the same vein, an entrée portion of chicken, prodded with hefty slices of red bell pepper and onion, is an unthreatening assortment of muted flavors. The white meat gives off a pleasant, though faint, essence of charcoal, but that's about it. Only the side of potato pancakes stands out — tacky patties dominating the plate, throwing off an intense aroma of herbs and a strong, bitter taste.

So, call U Slavíků what you will. There are ups and downs, pinks and crimsons, all in a clashing ambience representing many different centuries. It can be moderately good or regrettably bad, and let's leave it — impenetrably — at that.