Eating with the Czechs

In the Czech Republic it is apparently traditional not to get your own table when you stop at a restaurant.  You get stuck at a table with other people.  This, if you think about it, is quite efficient from a table bussing perspective, but it does require a bit of cultural readjustment.  I had read about this in a travel guide and was prepared: "it's a great way to meet knew friends!" chirped the guide book.  So, preparing myself gladly to meet new people (you know me--always eager to talk with random strangers) and ready to eat anything but a traditional Czech tripe soup, I set off on a journey of cultural exploration.

Since I usually ate supper at the Christmas Markets while walking around (their brats FAR outstripped Dutch brats and were very nearly as good as German brats) and since breakfast was included at my hotel, I didn't really need to look for a restaurant very much.  The first restaurant I went to was the Hotel U Varhanare (which means "The Organ") which is at the top of the mountain on which Kutna Hora is located so, as I ate, I had a really beautiful view out over the valley and up the path to St. Barbara's Cathedral and the Jesuit College.  Also, I was the only one there and got to eat all by myself.

This is the name of the hotel over the doorpost, with
all appropriate accents.  On the left you can see the
hotel and, behind the tree, just the edge of
St. Barbara Cathedral.

Even though this was in a very touristy town, the food was still very cheap.  I had a Czech Sampler which showed off some of the traditional Czech foods.  There were two kinds of dumplings.  One was kind of like a dense white bread and the other was like a slightly smaller potato bread.  Then there were three kinds of meat--roasted pork, ham, and a weird looking reddish sausage that was really good.  All that was served with a large pile of "cabbage" by which they mean sauerkraut.  The sauerkraut was flavored with fennel and was very mild and went very well with the rest of the food.  It does lead me to suspect, though, that either Mom makes terrible sauerkraut or just that Americans generally do.  I don't think that anyone in the family would complain if we had this stuff--it wasn't stinky or gross at all.  So far I haven't minded German sauerkraut, have liked Dutch sauerkraut, and have really liked Czech sauerkraut.  Though, in Mom's defense, while I was in Amsterdam a bit ago, I had an "American Style Hotdog" (because it was the only close place to eat) which was served with sauerkraut and that sauerkraut was disgusting.  So maybe it is just American-style sauerkraut that is gross and it isn't Mom's fault.

I do hope that the Czechs aren't offended if you don't finish your food, though (when we went to Munich we were told that it was pretty much a mortal insult to not finish your food).  This restaurant served massive portions and I wasn't able to finish it and 1) I didn't know the etiquette for asking for a doggy bag (much less a non-idiomatic term with which to ask for it) and 2) I didn't really want to carry a juicy bag of sauerkraut around with me all day so I ended up leaving a fair bit behind.

On Saturday, I was in Prague wandering around and, at about 1:30, I got really hungry (the hotel served good breakfasts) so I decided to stop at the Restaurace Pivovarsky Dum--the Restaurant Brewery House.

This time, when I went in, it was busy so I got seated at a table with some Czech folks which, preparation for cultural distinctions notwithstanding, still felt really awkward and like a huge invasion of personal space.  Fortunately, they ignored me and I ignored them and I was sitting facing the window, so I could watch people going by outside.  One thing that the guide book did NOT mention was that general table-serving etiquette still applies in Czech restaurants so they take orders and serve everyone at the table at the same time, whether or not they are in the same party.  Which seems like a good plan.  The only thing worse than sharing tables would have to be eating your dinner while everyone else stared at you and wondered why their dinners were taking so long.  However, this time I was seated at a table where one member of the party was late.  Really, really late.  So nobody got any dinner.  After a little over an hour, I snuck to the restroom and then snuck to the front to pay for my drink and then snuck out, still without any dinner.  I felt a little sorry for myself at that point since it was after three and I still hadn't had any dinner (and also because I had been sitting at a table with random people for over an hour) but I went back across town to the Christmas Market and had a brat instead, which worked out pretty well.  Also, as a little bonus, as I was sitting at the table for that interminable period, staring out the window, I noticed the sign across the street which was kind of interesting.  The Evangelical Methodist Church was housed in the very dreary Soviet-looking building across the street.  It almost made up for that hour in the restaurant.