The Prague Post
September 6th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Night & Day

Too cool for Smíchov

Once-hot name tries its luck in the tourist zone
Restaurant Review | Search restaurants | Archives

By Dave Faries
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 2nd, 2007 issue

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
One of the highlights: Caprese salad features flavorful cherry tomatoes.
If at first your consciously hip Smíchov lounge loses its cachet, try again in a dreary New Town hollow.
Such is the apparent logic behind the new iteration of Jet Set. The concept — part chill cocktail lounge, part eclectic diner — generated quite a buzz when it opened a few years ago across from Novy Smíchov. “Cool” is a fleeting thing, however, and Prague 5 a difficult draw.
Jet Set

V Jámě 6
Prague 1–New Town
Tel. 221 634 100
Open daily 7:30 a.m.–midnight

Food
Service
Atmosphere
Overall
Rather than repositioning something stale on a different shelf, it might seem prudent to reinvent the brand. But different rules apply in the tourist zone. During my first visit to the new iteration of Jet Set, one of the managers sat at a nearby table plotting advertising options. The plan he outlined leans heavily on the placement of flyers in area hotels. In fact, the lounge-restaurant is plugged into the lobby of an equally new boutique hotel, the Icon.
Tourists and business-lunch drones share the same ambition: decent food in a clean joint. And neither group is trapped by the tyrannical “what’s hot, what’s not” forces. So perhaps the folks behind Jet Set are onto something.
From the Menu
  • Fried calamari 130 Kč
  • Beef carpaccio 170 Kč
  • Caprese 140 Kč
  • Burger 170 Kč
  • Turkey steak 180 Kč
  • Gnocchi 160 Kč
  • Stella Artois 45 Kč
Food service certainly meets, and may exceed, tourist zone standards. Although beef carpaccio starts with dull meat, the seasoning is spot on: a light, imprecise dusting of salt and cracked black pepper. Sparks of pepper sharpen one slice, bits of salt another, so the very unevenness becomes almost captivating. The kitchen throws on slices of reasonably piquant Parmesan, generous in size, and sets the whole on a coating of mild olive oil.
The caprese salad pits surprisingly tangy cherry tomatoes against milky, somewhat spongy mozzarella. It’s a pleasant combination, offset only by flavorless toasted basil leaves.
Not bad, for starters.
As at so many of Prague’s upstart midrange venues, however, the kitchen rarely achieves more than adequate results. The overriding sensation when biting into ovals of fried calamari is that of cooking oil. Clean cooking oil, mind you, but smudgy, nondescript oil, nonetheless. The “crispy” bacon promised in the Jet Set burger turns out to be limp and chewy, the beef parched and oversalted. Otherwise, it’s a well-constructed sandwich, pitching in with bitter greens, sweet/tart red onion and a selection of condiments — excellent support for ground beef and smoky bacon … in concept.
Several dishes likewise falter after a promising start. Singed rosemary and other herbs on the turkey steak jab a bolt of acrid, grassy bitterness across your palate before subsiding into softer, more resonant flavors. A side of potatoes slapped on the grill until streaks of sweet caramelized flesh emerge round out the entrée. But the meat itself is a nonentity, so flat it tastes like chicken.
Resilient, tacky, symmetrical rolls of gnocchi serve as a canvas for a potent blend of herbs, sun-dried tomatoes and garlic — hearty, though not particularly subtle. Underneath this passable mélange sits a glob of melted stuff, presumably cheese, oozing along the bottom of the bowl like pale, gelatinous lava. It contributes little more than a variation on the texture of molded potato dough.
As for atmosphere, Jet Set’s collision of cafeteria chic and cluttered lounge seems trite and contrived. Service is slow to get on track, but attentive enough. Menu items rarely aim for anything beyond pedestrian echoes, the sort of common denominator fare that packs Stateside chains.
The place doesn’t need the dubious pretense of “cool” to reel in one-time customers. It is new and clean and not really all that disappointing. The Icon hotel, wedged next to one of New Town’s ubiquitous “cabarets,” however, could use a consciously hip contrivance to help gentrify the stag-party zone.
That’s the logic of it.

Dave Faries can be reached at dfaries@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (2/05/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Provokator
Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.