Culture shock at Java Café

Eating at Java Café was a bewildering experience from start to finish. The initial confusion is not quite the café's fault, however. Some people never learn, including this writer, who felt it unnecessary to make a reservation ahead of time. After all, it was a Wednesday, it was on quiet Řimská street in Vinohrady, and the weather was so unbelievably gorgeous it seemed unlikely anyone would want to eat indoors and in a basement, unless they had to review a restaurant, of course.

But as we wandered in the waitress quickly told us it would be impossible without a reservation. "What about later tonight?" She smiled, said yes and ran downstairs. When she reappeared, she told us that yes, we could eat downstairs and that we should go down there immediately. Once there, we found a quite spacious dining room divided into three parts, with empty tables but none available for us, the server informed us. Come back at 8:30.

When we returned, the dining room downstairs was half-full, and we were relegated to a side room where we were the only diners. "Are you using a coupon?" the waiter asked us almost immediately. It set the tone for the evening, in which the waiter wouldn't crack a smile. Our empty room was quite lonely, and we couldn't help but wonder why we'd had to wait until now to get a table.

Two of us chose a glass of rose, the Chateau Tuilerie Rosé 2009, for what at first glance looked to be 79 Kč. That, in fact, was the price for only 1 deciliter, and we got 2 deciliters. The final price on the bill, however, turned out to be even higher, because they had apparently run out of that particular wine, and simply poured us the more expensive one without asking.

Two glasses of the Lafond Roc-Epine Tavel Rosé totaled 412 Kč on our bill. For two glasses of wine. Wine that tasted like bitter cough syrup and retails at about $15 per bottle in the United States. When we took it up with the waiter, he consulted the manager, came back and shrugged, as if adjusting the price to fix the restaurant's mistake was beyond their ability.

But that was at the end of the night, after we'd taken our bill up to the bar because the light in our dining room had been turned off. When we pointed this out, we received only another shrug, which I'm going to assume was because of a language barrier; otherwise, the reaction is too unbearable to think about.

All this, of course, has nothing to do with the food. Would that the service had been the only bad part of the night. Instead, Java Café's food and service seem well-suited to each other. The first inkling of this was apparent before the food even touched our lips. Two appetizers, corn and vegetable fritters (Bakwan Jagung) and fried rice-paper spring rolls (Lumpia), came with sides of the identical, sweet "Thai chili" sauce that is an abomination of corn syrup and food coloring. It's also unforgivably lazy, more so for a kitchen that purports to bring something new to the dining scene. Surely Indonesian cuisine, in all its complexity, has come up with a few recipes for sauce?

In a sort of horrible catch-22, however, the appetizers were both inedible by themselves. The corn fritters were unseasoned circles of undercooked dough, and the rice-paper rolls unraveled messily, spilling guts of gluey rice vermicelli. Both of these dishes were adorned with flowers. They may have been edible, but we didn't care to find out.

Soto Ayam promised a fragrant rice vermicelli chicken soup. It had rice vermicelli, and it did have bites of grilled chicken, but all in a broth that was wholly uninfluenced by anything Asian. It was simply chicken noodle soup, but with different noodles.

To order the beef redang is to wonder whether the kitchen had simply made beef goulash and added a glug or two of coconut milk. Beyond that distinguishable flavor, it had none of the aromatics typical of Indonesian food - such as lemongrass, ginger, galangal or chili - in any real measure.

Chicken satay was a safe choice, and it turned out to be quite decent. The chicken pieces had a nice char and were a good mix of both dark and white meat, important if the meat is to stay moist. The four skewers were topped with crushed peanuts and fried onions and laid atop a sweet peanut sauce. If your taste runs sweet, this is your dish, but don't expect any real heat.

Finally, one dish stands out at Java Café, but for the wrong reasons: the Gado-Gado. When it first arrived, it looked bizarre, but nothing to turn our appetites. Glutinous rice had been formed into dumpling-like slices interspersed with shrimp crackers, cucumber slices and sticks of unseasoned, fried tofu. Once this layer was penetrated though - oh, the horror.

Gado-Gado should be made with this top layer of ingredients over steamed and blanched green vegetables, including cabbage, and then doused with a peanut sauce. This version, however, had substituted iceberg lettuce where there should have been cabbage, and they used lots of it. It was a watery, soggy mess.

Good Indonesian food in Prague would be a welcome addition, but Java Café isn't providing it. In fact, this is the second Java Café restaurant in Prague we've run across that hasn't been able to turn out good Indonesian - A Restaurant Java Café once housed in the Lucerna Palace closed nearly a year ago this month. Eighteen months ago, Prague Post restaurant critic Fiona Gaze gave that one a zero-star rating (see "Letdown in Lucerna", The Prague Post, Oct. 28, 2009). History has repeated itself, in an unfortunate way.

Claire Compton can be reached at
ccompton@praguepost.com