Hiding down a narrow staircase halfway between two side streets in Prague’s Castle Quarter hang various cooking utensils to mark restaurant Nad Uvozem. With a gorgeous open air view south to Petrin Hill and the river, a 4-course prix fixe “authentic Czech” lunch was just what I needed after 6 hours of hiking all over the city. We started in the Old Town Square and worked our way through the churches to the Charles Bridge and up to the Castle into St. Vitus Cathedral. Sore and crungry, pork dumplings and garlic soup sounded amazing.
The white surface of the bowl of soup is literally chopped raw garlic! Garlic and pieces of uncooked leek combined to create an incredibly spicy broth. I was actually expecting that it might make me sick to my stomach but it was more mild than I thought. Not sure anyone else could pull off fire-breath soup like this, though, as interesting an idea as it might be for a dinner party…
The next two courses were combined on a plate of gravy: potato dumplings stuffed with salty ham and creamy sweet and sour cabbage. The potato dumplings were like dense sponges that soaked up the gravy and transported the pork into my mouth without distracting me from either. The cabbage was unlike any I’ve tried before: super sweet but tart for the vinegar and salty for the translucent pieces of bacon. It’s sauce was opaque as if it were a cream base which I can only imagine—based on my now extensive recipe research online—can be from the bacon drippings slow cooked with onion and cabbage. More chopped raw leeks topped the tangy cabbage for some extra kick.
For dessert, an apple strudel with skin-on apples and puff pastry. We were surprised how not sweet the pastry was, including the plain whipped cream with chocolate shavings. I think it’s a myth that desserts must be sticky sweet and this proved it. I could really taste the apples and the butter in the pastry. I found that the chocolate shavings, being the sweetest thing on the plate, were more than enough.
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