The Prague Post
December 1st, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Night & Day

Soul food

Hearty helpings of Czech classics - and perfect chips
Restaurant Review | Search restaurants | Archives

By Dave Faries
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 13th, 2008 issue

Klášterní šenk


Markétská 1 (inside Břevnov Monastery)
Prague 6-Břevnov
Tel. 220 406 294
Open daily 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.

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

JAN PŘEROVSKÝ/THE PRAGUE POST
Get thee to a monastery for a little history and a whole lot of food.
FROM THE MENU



Kulajda 55 Kč
Pork cracklings 25 Kč
Fried Tvarůžky 69 Kč
St. Jiří's lance (meat skewer) 199 Kč
Stuffed bramboracky 189 Kč
Pork knuckle 249 Kč
Potato chips 35 Kč
Klaster beer 28 Kč
For a place devoted almost solely to Czech traditions, Klášterní šenk turns out one gorgeous pile of potato chips.
Yes, the all-American crisp — but unlike everyday, pale-yellow bagged chips, these emerge from the kettle the color of burnished amber, brittle and clean, seasoned with such a delicate hand that the touch of salt barely rustles the most sensitive edges of the palate. Although relegated to the side-dish menu, they are capable of upstaging weightier offerings.
Klášterní šenk prepares dishes fit for the medieval appetite: heavy, meaty, tasting of smoke and old stone hearths. Many platters arrive on timeworn and thoroughly abused cutting boards. Strips of fat and meat flap from the pork knuckle, waiting to be hacked away by the dull, 10-inch weapon jabbed into the beast. A skewer — nay, a wrought-iron sword — of grilled meat features rough-cut hunks of ham notable for the ruddy color and rich, fatty and sweet flavor backed by an acrid waft. Tender pieces of seared chicken present that same smoky veneer, but with mellow strokes. Hefty cuts of bell pepper, onion, eggplant and other vegetables separate the meats. What it lacks in aesthetics, the pork knuckle makes up for in husky flavors that pair nicely with sauces of horseradish, mustard and cherry.  
The kitchen stoops to cooking cracklings — translated into the British “pork scratchings” — an art lost to modern convenience and the erosion of peasant culture. Cooked lightly, the plump cubes almost deflate on the tongue, oozing rich and vaguely meaty sensations. Yet it’s perhaps better to fire cracklings into something caramelized and crunchy, as home cooks did in the old American South. A thorough scorching burns off some of the dense, suet-like consistency while branding each piece with a bitter haze.
Those unfamiliar with this old-school relic consisting of fried fat and rind will likely recoil in disgust, but it’s in keeping with Klášterní šenk’s theme.
And it’s sometimes fun to watch your companion squirm as you pop pork scraps and chug beer.
The restaurant revels in culinary tradition: sausages cooked in beer, bread topped with pan-seared chicken livers, roasted rabbit leg, duck breast with all the usual trimmings. Kulajda, the intensely tangy Czech soup of dill and potato, is served in a flattering rye bread bowl. Classic potato pancakes — bramboráčky— balance creamy, herbal flavors with the bitterness scored from the pan. If you order at least a day in advance, the kitchen staff will prepare roast piglet or baked goose as well.
And they bridge the gap between traditional Czech favorites and more recent pub creations nicely. Instead of plebeian smažený sýr and tartar sauce, for example, they fry up small rounds of Tvarůžky, the unique ripened cheese from the Olomouc area. First documented in the early 1500s, this aromatic (sometimes an understatement, but this is a mild variety), savory curd finds support from an interesting garlic dip. An excess of dill pins the sharper bite of garlic until the finish, when it sneaks across your palate, trailing behind it the piquant flavor of Tvarůžky.
A plate of fried cheese rarely struts this much complexity.
Klášterní šenk concedes a few other items to modern-day tastes — Caprese salad, for instance, and an array of steaks. But the restaurant’s emphasis on old-fashioned fare fits well with its surroundings. Lodged within Břevnov Monastery, a location dedicated in 993 and touched up when skirmishes like the Hussite Wars made rebuilding necessary, the dining room features weathered stone walls and hewn rafters, reminiscent of a medieval barn. So if not a destination itself, the place is well worth visiting before or after a stroll around the historic grounds.
The beer is fresh and the potato chips … well, just order a batch and a cool 0.5 glass, and forget about the tour.

Dave Faries can be reached at dfaries@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (13/08/2008):

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.