Veggie victuals

Lehká hlava has long enjoyed the reputation as the best and most beautiful vegetarian restaurant in Prague. Its newer sister restaurant, Maitrea, is a welcome addition to the city's vegetarian options. Like that of Lehká hlava, the restaurant's interior alone is worth a visit: Pale polished wood furniture and details seem to have sprouted up out of the ground, awash in cozy light from fabric lamp fixtures.

The setting is supremely relaxing, ideal for a location that's not only a restaurant but also a "house of personal development," with separate seminar rooms for classes and lectures on therapy, philosophy and meditation.

The mixed-use setting doesn't mean the cuisine is given short shrift, however. Maitrea prepares its vegetables perfectly - no easy task when such ingredients can quickly turn to mush. The first example of this was roasted red peppers, marinated in balsamic vinegar and olive oil. The ruby-red slices were slippery but firm, sweet and tart. This lovely appetizer is available on its own or as a component of a five-item starter that also includes beet tartar, a sour cream chive dip, beet cakes and hummus, all of which provided a wonderful sampling from the menu.

Beet tartar is so named for its appearance rather than preparation. While tartar suggests raw, the minced bits of beet were cooked, but served firm and sweet, mimicking the original dish only in their glistening ruby-red presentation and the cute play on words.

Hummus was done well: neither too oily nor too chalky, a careful balance of chickpea puree, sesame paste and olive oil that imbued everything it touched on the platter with its creaminess. Beet cakes were pleasant but slightly bland on their own and suffered from a limp exterior that should have been crispy.

Entrees were generous if not always complex. An Okara burger, a soy byproduct, was enormous, perched on top of a focaccia bun and smothered in the same chive dip from the appetizer. While the nearly inch-thick patty had other shredded vegetables mixed in, they weren't in sufficient amount to balance out the liberal use of bread crumbs. While the bread acted as a good glue to keep the patty in shape, it made for an unfortunately bland taste that wasn't helped any by the bun.

On a second visit, service was as it was on the first - extremely kind and patient but lackadaisical. Drinks, once finished, lingered on the table. On both occasions, silverware that had been whisked away on appetizer plates was not replaced, leaving entrees untouched until a server's attention could be caught.

On a seconf visit, a 'burger' was made of a tower of goat cheese, eggplant and spinach was piled tenuously atop a dark, hearty brown bread. A second piece of bread next to the layers suggested the dish was meant as a sandwich, but the lightest pressure would have sent the contents straight out the sides. While the bread itself was delicious, forkfuls of the sautéed goat cheese, creamy with a golden crust, fresh spinach and silky, perfectly cooked strips of eggplant were delicious enough to render it superfluous.

In true Prague form, a quesadilla arrived looking, well, un-quesadilla-like. A wrapped tortilla seemed baked and was crispy on the outside, encasing a salty and tasty filling of olives, feta and spinach. The accompanying array of sauces included a tomato "salsa" that seemed more like a chutney, sweetish sour cream and a dollop of guacamole. The components, though individually tasty, were scattered. The quintessentially Greek combination of the "quesadilla" wasn't a comfortable match with the distinctly Latin-American sides, a distraction that was nevertheless too small to really detract from the savory wrap.

Good vegetarian restaurants are often more careful with ingredients, making sure dishes are freshly prepared and rooted in high quality. So it was dismaying to find a salad topped liberally with peeled fresh tomatoes. They were exactly the sort of tomatoes one would expect to find in the Czech Republic in late January: mealy and tasteless, spreading their mushy bits around the otherwise lovely layers in the salad. The avocado slices were only acceptable, given the fruit's lowered standard in this country, but lettuce was bright and crisp, tempeh nuggets were crusted with a Parmesan coating, and the honey-lime dressing punctuated cilantro and red onion slices.

If the carrot cake is an accurate representation, Maitrea shines with desserts that are simultaneously delicious but seem healthy enough to erase any guilt. The carrot cake was a bit of a misnomer, in that the two slices weren't cakey in the least. Instead, an abundance of shredded carrot and coconut was blended in a sticky mixture with walnuts, raisins, ginger and millet, a gluten-free whole grain. If that sounds too healthy for you, don't worry - the whole thing was completely doused in a cover of hot, fudgey chocolate sauce.  

Maitrea's components are near-faultless, but less than ideal combinations and preparations keep the dishes from making a big impression. The restaurant might also be one of the few places in town to find a meat-substitute version of svíčková. But you'll have to try that for yourself.

Claire Compton can be reached at
ccompton@praguepost.com