Practice makes perfunctory

Say a word enough, and it starts to lose its meaning. Eat a dish too many times, and you start to lose your taste for it. Repetition can be fatal to an idea, look or essence, so if you walk through Old Town Square too many times, you don't notice what's really around you anymore.

Cuisine is no exception, and menus contain certain items that have become blind spots to someone who eats out enough: beef carpaccio, Caprese salad, tuna tartare and créme brulee, to name only a few. They can only be taken as filler; why else would a kitchen attempt something that's being done next door, down the block and across the street? Perhaps a need to pad the menu or subservience to the common appetite, the latter being just as frustrating as the former.

There is something to be said, however, for sticking to what works. The Kogo restaurant chain isn't lacking for customers, at least at their first two locations at Havelská and Slovanský dům. How it's third, Kogo Duplex, is doing, isn't clear. But stuck in a rooftop Wenceslas Square disco seems an odd choice for a restaurant chain that's been so far mostly praised.

The chain's fourth restaurant comes back down to earth, surprisingly close to Slovanský dům in a beautiful space facing the Estates Theater. The Kogo brand takes second billing to the name Kolowrat Palace, but the brand's mark is all over the menu. Italian ingredients are re-imagined into dishes that please the greatest amount of people. Cross-referencing the four establishments' menus shows that the chain makes full use of tried-and-true dishes at the latest restaurant, and for the same prices.

But Kogo's fourth is leaps and bounds from the gaudy scene at Kogo Duplex. This time they've gone classic and set up in a part of a Baroque palace, tastefully decorating three large rooms of varying formality without excessive flourish. The first room is a cozy café, with sandwich, entree and dessert counters, the second a smoking room and the third a nonsmoking room with white tablecloths.

There is one dish I will always try, again and again, in hopes that it will be done differently: the beef tartare. Ideally, the lean, red beef should be between a dice and a mince, and extras mixed in to taste by the diner. Too often, it's a grind that becomes mushy, as it was in this case. Furthermore, the mix was too sweet with ketchup, and pre-mixed with toasted baguettes. In this state, you might as well put it on the grill.

It's hard to say the antipasto platter is disappointing. After all, it was a pretty plate, and it might have gone over better with a vegetarian. But the dish relied too heavily on peppers - with three of them - and came with only two thin slices of meat, one prosciutto and one lardo. The seasoning on the vegetables was basic and did little to boost the dish. Small, puffed squares of focaccia-like bread were nearly hollow and a bit too old.

At 395 Kč, the linguine with lobster, zucchini and shrimp set the bar high before it even arrived. Unfortunately, the extremely small lobster tail produced a stringy, tough meat, the shrimp were small and defrosted, and the limp zucchini did little to add any sort of flavor to the dish.

My dining companion that night did better with a hearty veal ragout on fettuccini, the meat lending its depth to a velvety tomato sauce that clung to each strand. The pieces themselves were a bit too large for the pasta but tender nonetheless.

The first visit also saw an upright bass-and-guitar duo that performed adult contemporary classics, at a low enough volume that it wasn't any worse than background music, and with enough talent to avoid spoiling dinner.

A second visit was without live music but still had the same warm atmosphere, despite the size of the dining rooms. Slices of bread were fresh and dense, a relief from the first chewy servings. On both visits, two different servers were easygoing, relaxed but still on top of service and quick to smile. Kogo certainly keeps a welcome focus on service consistent at all of its locations.

We would have been better off without the bread, however, since a special soup of the day came with cubes of bread actually in the soup, a Tuscan staple. In Tuscany, the bread used for such soups is dense and often stale, allowing it to hold up better in the broth. This soup was delicious: good stock, juicy chicken and nice veggies and Parmesan, but the bread was too fresh and became doughy in the broth.

Bruschetta looked lovely on the plate, topped four different ways, and all four were lovely to eat, as well. Lardo was rich and spiked with rosemary; black olive tapenade was dark and fruity; chicken liver mousse was thick and creamy and cut by capers on top. The fourth, tomato bruschetta, is available on its own on the menu, and was fresh but nothing spectacular.

The steak was a testament to meat, with savory flavors that blended into each bite. The rib-eye cut had been cooked to perfectly medium-rare, an order that's seldom delivered in Prague, sliced on the plate and drizzled with a creamy truffle sauce that mixed with the pink meat juices. Coin-shaped roasted new potatoes were rosemary-scented and served nicely to mop up the sauce on the plate. The only downside was the meat lacked any real flame-grilled taste; grill marks were anemic and seemed to have been branded from a pan.

A chocolate cake that looked formidable behind the counter came as a generous slice that was half-good. The cake layers were terribly dry, but the mousse in between was light and flavorful.

It can't be said that any of Kogo's dishes are flat-out terrible. With four restaurants under their belts, they've got the experience to know what works. But dinner at yet another Kogo can feel just like that, work: something you see every day and know the ins and outs of. The upside of rote cuisine is that some dishes are outright wonderful, a success of trial and error. Good food in a lovely setting is fine; it's just not exceptional.

Claire Compton can be reached at
ccompton@praguepost.com