The Prague Post
November 22nd, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Night & Day

Rare breed

Le Bifteque hits the mark near Old Town Square
Restaurant Review | Search restaurants | Archives

By Dave Faries
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
September 5th, 2007 issue

Le Bifteque

Malé nám. 4
Prague 1–Old Town
Tel. 224 247 400
Open daily 11 a.m.–11 p.m.

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

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
With a view to the world outside, Le Bifteque's line cooks concentrate on fresh ingredients and a hot grill.
FROM THE MENU

Roasted scallops 219 Kč
Brittany oysters (six) 187 Kč
Jerusalem artichoke soup 90 Kč
Roast duck breast 385 Kč
Tenderloin steak 385 Kč
Rib-eye steak 385 Kč

Nitpicking at Le Bifteque’s little faults is easy enough.
The fridge-burned butter was none too pleasant, particularly when spread on gritty bread. And the king crab stuffed into one side dish smacked of extensive processing.
But quibbling over such details cannot blot the restaurant’s many qualities. Le Bifteque ranks as one of the few very good restaurants in the immediate vicinity of Old Town Square.
Duck breast is prepared magret-style, with crunchy skin over very rare and juicy meat. In between, a defined layer of fat drips with the momentary pleasure of burning autumn leaves, smoky and almost earthy. Magret dictates grilling duck on the skin side first, to sizzle the skin and melt some of the fat. When flipped, all that concentrated flavor oozes into the meat itself. The rich combination brushes off dabbles of strawberry sauce, a tart and perhaps unnecessary play on the usual forest berry condiment. On the side, potatoes and celery mashed together serve as a base for seared foie gras. It’s an ungainly construction but works quite well: meaty, musty flavors drawn together with a gentle vegetal snap.
Brittany oysters are baked with pungent cheese and a factious bacon fricassee. Smaller examples are overpowered by all this attention, but the larger oysters stand their ground, drawing acrid tastes from bits of cured meat, building on the earthiness of mushrooms and softening the tart conjecture of Parmesan.
Both are bold, complicated dishes, bombarding you with flavors and textures held within a well-considered frame.
Scallops wrapped in San Daniele ham is another Gordian structure. The meat surrounding each small scallop reeks with sweet smoke at first, sinking quickly into a sublime huskiness washed soon after by briny residue from the curing process. San Daniele is often served with fruits, so fitting it to delicately sweet shellfish seems like a good idea. It may, in fact, be too strident, but provides an intensity lacking in scallops. To the side sits a tuna tartare fez, bright ruby in color, almost translucent on the fringes, laden with herbs and bitter vegetables.
Sometimes it seems as if kitchen staff can’t abide simplicity. For instance, they top cream of Jerusalem artichoke soup — and take the word “cream” seriously — with milk foam, then dimple walnut oil around the surface. But when the results are so consistently satisfying, who cares?
The dining room is draped in romantic masculinity, that equivocal sense of dignity and seductiveness drawn from simple lines and impassive color. Other restaurants in this city could learn from Le Bifteque’s extraordinarily limited menu — a single page of appetizers and entrees that allows the kitchen to focus its penchant for brazen flavors. Still, there’s something for almost every taste: seafood, one or two Czech classics, a few vegetarian items and beef.
The kitchen treats tenderloin in much the same manner as other menu items, plating it with airy, though quite creamy, gnocchi flecked by truffle for a deep hearth of flavor, along with a  shallot bulb carved out and stuffed with the suspicious crab I alluded to earlier — a lot of action in one space. A sauce of pomegranate softens the steak’s stoic demeanor. Ordered rare, the center is barely warm, deep magenta in color and mellow, with just a hint of herbal marinade.
One thing is missing, though: that blackened, bittersweet glaze burned onto the surface by a quick torching over high heat. Same with the rib-eye: The outside fails to caramelize, even at medium-rare.
Still, the flavor of Le Bifteque’s rib-eye is straightforward and natural for once, bent only by a run through coriander before grilling, yielding something vaguely tangy on the edge of each bite.
Like I said, it’s possible to nitpick. Whatever disappointments you experience, however, will likely be short-lived.
In the end, Le Bifteque is an extraordinary restaurant.

Dave Faries can be reached at dfaries@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (5/09/2007):

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.