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Not so wild child

Second Charleston serves up hip looks, square food
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By Dave Faries
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 8th, 2007 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
It's all happening on the walls of Charleston, but the kitchen is far more subdued.
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Charleston

Štěpánská 47
Prague 1–New Town
Tel 222 211 530
Open daily 8 a.m.–10 p.m.

Food *
Service ***
Atmosphere **
Overall **

FROM THE MENU

Caprese salad 50 Kč
Fried plums with bacon 59 Kč
Spaghetti Bolognese 80 Kč
Chicken with plums 120 Kč
Spicy chicken 110 Kč
Pork cutlets 189 Kč
French fries 35 Kč

The folks behind Charleston own three Prague 8 establishments. One, bearing the same name, is a multilevel labyrinth decked out in classic pub form, with dark woods, brick cellars and cluttered walls.
Normally, when opening a second operation, restaurateurs bank on the look or ambience of the original. Jet Set did this, for example, when they stamped their sleek moniker on a space just a few short meters down V Jámě from the newest Charleston. And one Potrefena Husa feels pretty much like another.
Clearly, however, the original Charleston is not a concept the owners wish to duplicate. The New Town revision looks more like a cafeteria on acid, awash in bright yellow, swirling in red and aqua. Bulbous lamps of the same hues dangle here and there.
It’s all rather far out.
Food service runs along more conventional lines. Pork cutlets are topped by redundant slices of bacon and hunks of melted camembert — one of those old “blue-plate special” combinations that manage to satisfy momentary hunger without straining the conformity of common taste. Tender meat, vaguely sweet, with mild bacon offering up a waft or two of smokiness and sedentary cheese amounts to a well-prepared but not very interesting dish. Same with the spaghetti Bolognese, notable only for its faint oily texture and temporal earthiness: a decent, though not very memorable, home-style production.
Chicken in plum sauce starts with the usual suspect white meat, dry and dull. The sauce drenches everything in wine-rich bursts of alluvial sweetness. But that’s it.
The plum concoction would benefit from a compelling subplot, coy layers of contrasting or complementary flavors to draw you into the plate — a prickly reminder of pepper, say, or a hint of nutmeg … anything to add substance and complexity. At least the caprese salad rides on the assertive presence of basil. Otherwise, it is just a modest arrangement of torpid mozzarella and plain tomatoes.
Even when the kitchen stretches, the result is relatively placid. A skewer of sautéed plums wrapped in bacon stands as an interesting idea that fails to reach full potential — although, as with everything else here, it’s not bad, either. The bacon contributes soft flavors, although a more brazen cure would forge a better match to the dense fruit. Still, the textural contrast is nice: meat crisp on the edges, chewy in the middle, surrounding softened plum yearning to billow out. Once again, a “good, but” commendation.
Wok-style pieces of chicken stirred with vegetables discloses murky, sweet flavors in a quite spicy sauce, bulked up by a bitter vegetal core. For what probably ranks as the kitchen’s most intricate preparation, it still lacks real sophistication.
I’ll admit there’s a certain comfort to this type of presentation. The kitchen doesn’t overload guests with intricate technique or pedigreed ingredients. Instead, it achieves a consistent level of quality, however modest. Everything I tried over three visits was just fine for day-to-day purposes.
Aside from the far-out color scheme, it’s a regular-guy diner. Servers show some personality with casual humor and winsome natural smiles. They serve beer, but also roadside staples such as milkshakes and fruit cups.
The place even opens for breakfast.
Now, if you can’t spot Charleston, don’t worry. It overlooks the perpetual construction sight on the corner of V Jámě and Štěpánská. Restaurant management has helpfully posted “now open” signs on the corrugated fence surrounding a small mound of rubbish generated by four years of desperate labor.
Perhaps the arrival of this adaptation of Prague 8’s institution signals the end of a lengthy hard-hat project. That would be nice.
But Charleston can’t conjure up miracles. It can only serve common meals with a pleasant smile.

Dave Faries can be reached at dfaries@praguepost.com


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