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September 8th, 2008
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Food court fantasies

People-watching tops everything else at El Emir
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By Dave Faries
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
January 9th, 2008 issue

El Emir

Palladium Gourmet Floor
nám. Republiky 1
Prague 1–New Town
Tel. 225 770 250
(mall office)
Open Mon.–Fri. 11 a.m.–11 p.m., Sat.–Sun. 11 a.m.–midnight


Food *
Service **
Atmosphere *
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VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
As shoppers stroll by, others enjoy the wide-open comforts of the new Palladium.
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FROM THE MENU

Hummus 100 Kč
Tabouleh 130 Kč
Sanbou lahme 110 Kč
Makanek 130 Kč
Kafta halebiyeh 290 Kč
Lahem meshwi 350 Kč
Stella Artois 50 Kč

 Who drags a date to dinner in a shopping mall food court? However trendy or upscale the digs, the center’s vapid carnival of Muzak, gawkers and 50-percent-off racks is a relentless sideshow.
My first instinct upon entering the country’s newest and glitziest palace of mass consumption was to lean on Western sensibilities. Long before the Palladium opened, word spread about the “gourmet floor,” a top shelf of cool restaurants and nightclubs for discerning crowds. Instead, I found the Admiral Sports Bar and Casino (read: high-end herna), a burger joint, pizza place, something called L.A. Finger Food and the same Nordsee that’s lodged inside Flora.
In short, anybody can see through the “gourmet floor” marketing hype. Strip that away and this is a shopping-center food court, the same type of place where teens and West Virginians congregate.
Many dishes at El Emir, the food court’s Lebanese station, also defy the gourmet hype. The attempt at hummus, for example, ends up as a confounding khaki puree of chickpea so rife with lemon that the acidity scorches your tongue. Wedges of room-temperature flatbread, fresh from the package, cannot fend off the monomaniacal zing. Sanbou lahme must translate as “partially filled pastry with freezer burn,” for such is the consistency of these deeply browned, yet very chewy, pockets. Inside the airy pastry, mild minced lamb and onions wallow in a gooey paste.
While a few cubes of grilled lamb in the lahem meshwi presentation stand out, rich and fatty, bearing hints of grassy wildness, the dish more often calls for mindless chewing. Excess heat withers once-tender lamb into bland, stringy carcass squares. And the accompanying flatbread, spread with greenery, onions and a rather inappropriate cold marinara, mocks the notion of fine dining.
Yet, if you order well, fight off those persnickety value-for-money worries and keep your attention focused on the steady parade of you-know-what boots and capricious suits just a few feet away, the kitchen’s handiwork won’t seem at all bad.
The cool, peppery bite of parsley dominates El Emir’s version of tabouleh. By easing off on the bulgur and backing the herbal flair with a measured squirt of lemon, the kitchen produces a clean, fresh starter. Makanek, or little lamb sausages, strikes your palate first with an earthy sweetness that soon dissolves into the more rustic taste of grilled meat. Gritty seasoning supports the sausage’s crumbly texture. Where charred, the cinnamon and other soothing spices responsible for makanek’s intriguing flavor turn bitter, almost acrid — not a setback in this case, but another dimension.
In contrast to El Emir’s rather trite approach to dressing meshwi, the kafta draws on an intriguing combination of herbal signatures — sharp, slightly bitter, somewhat peppery — to brighten minced lamb before the flavor collapses into more familiar territory.
As one would expect from a Lebanese restaurant, the menu is heavy on chicken and lamb dishes, including the country’s simple but very popular presentation of grilled chicken doused with garlic (skipping, however, the less popular but more famous pairing of pheasant, bacon fat, cloves, cinnamon and so on). In keeping with a show of authenticity, mezze options dominate the listings.
It’s hardly gourmet, but applying Western logic to the mall’s culinary multiplex misses an essential point: The Palladium is an indoor Pařížská, a covered avenue where gray masses marvel and glitterati pose. In this milieu of the moment, restaurants serve more as perches within a destination than as destinations themselves. Their dishes need only flatter the noise, motion and ambition swirling around people-watching guests.
In that sense, Palladium’s gourmet floor comes off as too artful and hip to fit the traditional food court model. But if you’re there for the food, you’ll find that the superficial, ready-to-wear quality associated with shopping malls extends to the plate as well.

Dave Faries can be reached at dfaries@praguepost.com


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