~Toogahnein Flyers~: Velvet Foodies

Velvet Foodies

Today was the big food tour with Eva our guide from “Eating Prague Tours.”
The tour had six stops, and actually followed the webpage here pretty closely.

The basic drill was that we ate sample foods from each place while Eva told us how the food was made, what was special about the place, and what the owners or principals brought to their crafts. We started at Perníčkův sen, which is a gingerbread bakery started by a couple of sisters-in-law (not to be confused with “Sisters” below). This place was absolutely packed with gingerbread people, houses, and other objects. It was a nice introduction into post-Velvet Revolution entrepreneurship, a theme that grew throughout the tour with Eva’s narratives. Apparently the sisters-in-law started very small, just selling cookies. When the authorities did not shut down this tiny bit of capitalism, they grew it a bit larger, and then a bit larger. I don’t know when they moved into an actual shop, but they did eventually. And they made it over-the-top colorful, which is also another reaction against former communist rule, when everything was gray:

Our favorite was a plum jam roll, which isn’t gingerbread per se and is dull to look at, but was great tasting!

Eva then took us down a passageway. There's lots of these passageway shortcuts around the old town, but you have to look for them to see them. The passageways are part of the architectural and city planning concept of having people live entire days in one building, with their homes in apartments upstairs and offices, shops, and theaters downstairs. These downstair portions are open to the the streets at either end of the building, thus making shortcuts from one block, or blocks, to another. They are very ornate, with lots of Arts Nouveau and Deco as these blocks of multi-use buildings were erected from the 1890s through the 1930s. In the last couple of decades there has been a resurgence of this multi-use approach, with these lower passageways refilling with shops, museums, theaters, and art (?):

The bizarre inverse of the sculpture in Wencelas Square. Well, there's no accounting for taste!

The second stop after a short walk was Sisters, a bistro started and owned by Hana Michopulu, a famous Czech food journalist and the “mother of Prague farmers markets.” It’s a tribute to Czech traditional fast food, specializing in chlebíčky (open-faced sandwiches). These were Claudia’s favorites on the entire tour:

Open-faced sandwiches at Sisters. Top right were Claudia's favorite food of entire tour.

The next “stop” was right across the hall, at Naše Maso (translated means “Our Meat). This is a speciality butcher’s shop and the crowds are amazing. The Czech love their meat! An aside: I’ve seen “Naše” used as part of other companies’ names. It seems to hint at “Our” in a company name meaning “our local” or “our Czech” way of doing things, and may be in response to or mild reaction against domineering neighbors (Russia, Germany, Austria, etc.). Regardless, their kielbasa sausage (sadly, no photo), was my favorite of the tour.

Up next (up literally) was Restaurant Zvonice - it’s in a 15th century tower — the Jindřišská Tower. It's (I think) eight stories high. The restaurant occupies the top two stories. It's billed as being romantic (natch) and mysterious (which I did not "get," since it's so danged big and just sitting right there. You can't miss it. How mysterious is that?).

I am not a fan of sauerkraut, but the sauerkraut soup here was fantastic. It was at this stop that Eva revealed to us that the mushroom harvest this year was not all that was to be expected...Rather gloomy. I blame Obama.

The penultimate stop was at Styl & Interier - a Czech froo-froo market (think Williams-Sonoma crossed with Chez Panisse and a dollop of Martha Stewart). This entire project is a reclamation of a dump from the communist era, I kid you not. Everything not nailed down is for sale. Actually, I'm lying. Even things that are nailed down are for sale, as are the nails.

The nails are not cheap.

I’m having trouble understanding the history of the place, given what Eva told us, and what its current website says about it. According to Eva, it started as an artisan endeavor, making small wooden pieces for sale. The artist/owners also made some crude furnishings for their studio. Some customers visiting the studio thought that the furnishings were part of the “art” for sale, and so asked what the prices were. From then on, the artists-owners slapped price tags on EVERYTHING. It all sold. I don’t know when they expanded into food, but they made a great lamb pie and the black currant wine was very good. The raspberry lemonade tasted more like Kool Aid without the sugar, but they can’t all be home-runs. Check out their website to see how they’ve branched out into real estate, furniture, events hosting, food, and a bunch of other stuff - the ultimate poke in the eye to communistic authoritarianism!

And the final stop -- whew! -- was Café Louvre. "The cafe has welcomed a host of famouse thinkers over the last century, including Karel Capek [who?], Franz Kafka, and Albert Einstein." And now Claudia Saari and Jeff Boatright.

Standards may be slipping...

BUT! Café Louvre serves the most Czech of Czech dishes; The uh...whut...uh? Man, I don't even know what to tell you about this. At this point we've had about five hours of cookies, beer, wine, champagne, meat, beer, soup, wine, sandwiches, beer, meat, wine, and cocktails. And lemonade. I think.

I've lost track. Using ter Google, I discover that what we must've had was this:

which is SVÍČKOVÁ NA SMETANĚ, or Czech dumplings (the thing that looks like a slice of bread), braised beef, and cranberry compote under a cream dollop. Very filling, actually. This was followed by apple strudel, natch. I could barely walk out of the joint under my own steam. Staggered, more like.

So that's the Foodie part; what this about Velvet?

The foodie aspect of the tour was as complete as we’ve ever had, and easily met our expectations. The food itself was very good, Eva did a great job of explaining how the food was made, what the background or views of the owners, chefs, or bakers were, and placed all in the backdrop of Czech and Prague culture, both historically and contemporaneously.

And that writing makes it all sound boring — but it wasn’t. Eva was hyper-enthusiastic about every topic, every bit of food, history, and architecture. But the tour was really more about Eva’s take on Prague, what she wants visitors to know about in this little portion of her city.

First, she’s native, born and raised in Prague, very much in love with her city. Showed us the Church she was baptized in, and most of the tour is within shouting distance of where she grew up and still lives. She told us a bit about Prague under communist rule, and a bit of the experiences of her parents in the Prague Spring and of herself in the Velvet Revolution. More on that below. And though she’s Catholic, she gave us lots of information about the treatment of Jews over the centuries, around WWII, and currently. This part of the city lends itself well to all that as Old Town overlaps a lot with The Jewish Quarter, the very small part of the city that Jews were forced to live in for centuries.

So for instance, she pointed out that the sidewalks are mosaics made from little blocks of marble that are locally mined. There must be millions of these little blocks, making up sidewalks like this:

But then, look closer.

This is a stolperstein, a "stumbling block" to "stumble upon", a cobblestone-sized brass plate inscribed with the name and birth and death dates of victims of Nazi extermination. They are placed at the last known residence or workplace of a person before they were arrested by the Nazis or their agents. Prior to WWII, there were about 30,000 Jews living in Prague. Now there are about 3,000. There are many of these little markers all over Old Town and the Jewish Quarter, quietly saying the name of one person so that person won't be entirely forgotten.

This one person was Ida Ischenbrennerova. The marker tells us that she was born in 1882. She last lived free in the building that was shading me from the sun when I took this photograph. In 1942 she was deported to Terezina (Theresienstadt), a Gestapo concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Eva says that it is likely that Ida died there.

Things did not get back to normal after Czechoslovakia was liberated by the Soviets at the end of WWII. Soviet control was stifling of both personal freedoms and of the country's economy. In January of 1968, Alexander Dubček, leader of the Czech Communist Party, began pushing through reforms to remove restrictions on citizens' political rights and to decentralize the economy, all the while assuring Moscow that Czechoslovakia would remain a strong member of the Warsaw Pact.

Eva told us that when she was a kid, her parents and grandparents would still talk about the hope that was beginning to grow in Prague that life would be better. But, that all got crushed in August of 1968, when the Soviets and Warsaw Pact invaded with 500,000 troops and 3,000 tanks. The troops were met with peaceful resistance, but to no avail. Dubček was more or less kidnapped and later his release had to be negotiated. All of his reforms were quickly reversed.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Many of the frontline Warsaw Pact troops had to be rotated out when they realized that the Czechs were not mounting an armed "counter-revolution," as they had been told. In many cases they refused to harm the peacefully protesting Czechs. But, not always...

Eva says that the crushing of the Prague Spring in some ways crushed the Czech spirit, but it inspired some, like Václav Havel, to resist. By the late 80s, several Warsaw Pact governments were collapsing. This is was the backdrop of the Velvet Revolution, when the communist government relinquished power, punctuated with demonstrations in Wenceslas Square in November and December of 1989.

Eva was there in '89, in Wenceslas Square, and saw Havel speak from a balcony, declaring Czechoslovakia independence. She was 13 and a half years old. She nearly fainted. She must have describe this story many times on her tours, but she teared up telling us about it,especially about how inspirational Havel was that day. She also talked about what a great leader she thought he was as President for 10 years or so. She says that the Czechs really miss him now, and are nostalgic for his democratic approach to everything. She dismisses the current leadership as being not much more than vanilla bureaucrats (ah, but I think such is the price of "boring" peace and prosperity…)

Our little tour group stood in the dark area in the middle of Wenceslas Square, just off the tip of Havel's nose. We looked right up to the balcony that he's standing on.

Havel is dead now, but the Czechs put this large poster of him as a backdrop to "Good King" Wenceslas. The script says "Havel Forever"

The tour was great, but exhausting! Afterwards we wandered by the river. Here are some random photos of what is just normal Prague. All together we walked about 9 miles on the day.