Auberge de Provence

"Life is a pilgrimage. The wise man does not rest by the roadside inns. He marches direct to the illimitable domain of eternal bliss, his ultimate destination."
-Swami Sivananda

Prague's dark, gray winter was getting us down, and we had a strong urge to get out of town.

We hadn't made any plans, and didn't want to drive too long, so I came up with this proposal: We'd give the city a rest and go to a roadside inn outside the center for lunch.

We'd drive out, just past the airport, to the Prague West village Tuchoměřice and go to Auberge de Provence.I'd read a lot about this place and had also gotten a recommendation from a friend.

The air that day had the stinging smell of burning coal and an unpleasant inversion haze hung over the valley. Ironically, the air was actually cleaner in the center of Prague.

After getting off the highway, we followed a long and winding road that didn't have a lot of signs. The area is not as pleasant as you might think. The landscape's farms and villages are mixed with mega-warehouses and business parks.

The Auberge de Provence has a courtyard and an outdoor grill. It could be pleasant there in summer.The interior has stone walls and thick wood support beams. There's plenty of kitsch, like antlers, boots, and even a boat hanging from the ceiling.Lots of restaurants do this, but it's not too over the top here.

The waiter brought out warm, light baguette slices served with butter mixed with shallot and chive, I believe. V asked the waiter a few questons about the restauant and the food.

He used a lot cutsie Czech diminutive names in many of his descriptions. V finds this annoying.

There was an amuse bouche of chopped and mixed tomato, basil, and mozzarella.

We were amused that it was served on edible spoons that tasted like bread sticks. We not amused that the spoons were slightly stale.

I ordered the crottin de chevre en croute. The menu said it was"warm goat cheese and smoked duck breast in puffed pastry" (230 CZK). The pastry was coated with honey and had a cinnamon stick in it.Once a fork hit the crust, the hot, liquid goat cheese spread out on the plate.

I could not really detect any smoked flavor and the duck meat was a bit gray.

Still, it was a warm, sweet, salty, and satisfying starter.

V had moules au basilic, described as mussels broiled with tomatoes and basil served with herbed crostini.

The flavor of the basil was very pronounced in the sauce. The cherry tomatoes were on the sour side.It was not served wtih herbed crostini, but I didn't realize anything was missing until I looked at the menu on the internet.

For a main course, I had the steak and "Belgian frittes" (335 CZK). It was a fairly large and thick rumpsteak with a light pepper sauce. I added some extra salt. It said it came with a salad, but the leaf and tomato on the side didn't really qualify as a salad in my book.Regarding the size, it was certainly much larger than the steak I had with frites at Brasserie M a while ago. I wrote a post about that. However, Auberge's beef was very sinewy and not so easy to chew. The flavor was not bad, but nothing to write home about.

The frites were OK, but their standard size, shape, and taste indicated they almost certainly came from a supermarket. I'm not sure what made them Belgian. From Delvita, perhaps?

V ordered the sautéed lobster with herb butter and French bread (680 CZK). She loved it, and not a single morsel went to waste. She justified the extravagance by saying, "Well, we're not staying overnight at the inn, so with the money we've saved.."

It was a fairly small crustacean, split down the middle, heavily seasoned with salt, pepper, and other spices, and fried with butter.The waiter said it was being freshly prepared for us, so it was a little odd that it was barely warm when it came to the table.

I thought it was a bit overcooked and a little too salty. But V would not let me spoil her enjoyment with small complaints. She liked it, and that was that.

V ordered a . 1 liter glass of Bohemia sekt, Czech sparkling wine (50 CZK). She followed that up with her favorite beer, Leffe Blond (50 CZK).

The restaurant had Belgian Trappist and fruit beers, if you are into that. They were all around 100 CZK for .33 liter bottles.


I was driving and stuck to Mattoni sparkling mineral water (45 CZK).

The only dessert I considered was a Belgian waffle with warm fruit (140 CZK), but it wasn't available, so we just got the check.

I looked at the bill when we got home and noticed that instead of sekt, it said V had 2 "Prosecco 0,1" which cost a total of 100 CZK. There's no question that the one small glass was .1 liter, and there was a listing for sekt at 50 CZK on the menu, so it looks like they overcharged us by 50 CZK.

My feeling was it was pretty good food that was reasonably priced for what you get. I can't say I loved it. Plus, the mistake on the bill made me regret the nice tip I left. What I liked best, perhaps, was that it was not in Prague.

On the other hand, V said she enjoyed the experience at Auberge de Provence. She really liked her lobster and pointed out that, as expensive as it was, it was cheaper than most lobster dishes in town.

After our meal, we decided to explore the area. On the advice of Grant, from Grant's Prague Bike Blog, we visited the ruins of the 14th century Gothic castle at Okoř.He even said that the Hotel Okoř served up one of the best steaks he'd ever had. Since he is a former food critic himself, I hope we can go for a rest at this roadside inn and taste those steaks ourselves.

Life's pilgrimage toward eternal bliss will have to wait.

Auberge de Provence
U Špejcharu 355
Tuchoměřice
Prague-West


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Chateau Rouge (Chapeau Rouge)

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
-Mark Twain

A friend's band was playing at Chateau l'Enfer Rouge** (Red Hell Castle) on a Friday night.

It's not a usual hangout, but I headed over with a few guys to catch the show.


This bar-disco-music club been around since 1994 and used to be called Chapeau Rouge**. They had to change the name because of copyright issues.

These days, most people just call it Chateau or Chateau Rouge**.

Chateau** is a dark, ragged, red-cloaked bar that is not too far from Old Town Square. It has an international, yet seedy vibe that you won't find in too many other places around the city. The website actually says it was modeled after an Irish pub.

Inside, I found the usual mix of tourists, expats, and Czechs. It was packed later in the evening.The layout is very poor, and it was hard to get from one side of the two-room bar to the other without going outside and coming in the second entrance.

In 2003, Chateau expanded and created a dance club and bar in the basement.

That basement bar area almost always seems to be filled with American students.

But you'll find a few Czechs down there, too.

Next to the bar, there is a drab space with a peeling red paint job.

The floor is painted red and even that is peeling.

It has a sad little lighting system. It reminded me a bit of the basement of a college fraternity.

Perhaps because of the aesthetic deficiencies, the club invested in a heavy-duty fog machine.

It's not quite as foggy as it looks in the picture. The flash doesn't penetrate it too well.

Even so, the less you see, the better.

But wait, there's more. In the sub-basement, two levels down, there is a small space for live music called Chateau Underground.

I paid 100 CZK, got a stamp on my hand, and headed downstairs.

The sub-basement was recently reconstructed, and they did a good job with it. I saw bands there before the makeover.

Back then, it was hell-hole with bare concrete, exposed pipes, and a fine patina of filth.

Those were the days.

In the here and now, the first band I saw was The Tower of Dudes. They deployed an accordion, a mandolin/banjo, drums, bass, and a guitar.

I got there early and watched them do their sound check.I included this picture because the lights were up and it gives you a sense of what the room is like.

So, who are these dudes? This is from the band's Myspace bio:

The Tower of Dudes is one of the finest drunk bands you will ever see live. This mix of country, punk, pivo and germ warfare is guaranteed to make you dance and sing (or curse and boo) until this most glorious band of half-crazed misfits explodes. (Do people even read these bios?)

Apparently we do, Dudes.

Their lead singer is Johnny Feelings. Here's a short burst of their style.

It's not clear in the video, but the accordion playing dude is actually a dudette.

The headliners were The Careless Guys, a British-American-Canadian-Czech rock outfit. Led by a gentleman named Steve Cautious, the band's drummer and bass player have both worked as war correspondents.

In other words, you wouldn't call them cautious.

The guitarist in the big black wig is known as Noah Lowance. But without his wig, Noah is really Johnny Feelings. In case you care.

Here's a sample of The Careless Guys.

A few girls were dancing there at the end, and it was good fun.

I forgot to mention some other important information about the live music club. There is a very small bar in a separate room, and if memory serves, a half-liter of Staropramen in a plastic cup is 25 CZK. I think the price was higher upstairs, but you get a glass.

It takes just about three or four people to fill that cramped bar area. The passage leading to it is also very narrow. Later in the evening, it was almost impossible to get into it.

There was also a serious build-up of cigarette smoke -- Too many smokers and not enough ventilation. At a certain point, I couldn't take it anymore and had to move up to the top floor bar.

There, I was accosted by an Englishman with a pathological need to tell total strangers fantastically obvious falsehoods about his life.

Obviously, it was time to go.

The live music was over, the Europop was chirping, the bar was packed too tight, and people were getting weird.

As I searched for an exit, Chateau l'Enfer Rouge felt less like Twain's version of hell and more like Jean-Paul Sartre's.

"L'enfer, c'est les autres," he wrote. "Hell is other people."

Chateau L'Enfer Rouge
Jakubská 2
Prague 1
Tel. (+420) 222 316 328

**I received this e-mail from the club management in Sept. 2008:
We would like to inform you about renaming of our club to Chapeau Rouge (the former names were Chateau Rouge or L´enfer rouge). Chapeau Rouge is returning to its original name from 1919.


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El Barrio de Ángel

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
-Michelangelo

We recently had a chance to try El Barrio de Ángel, the Argentine steak house in Smichov.

Not everything was a work of art, but there were some very good dishes and we quite liked our lunch there.

The restaurant is part of a growing steakhouse renaissance in Prague.

It is located on a rather unfortunate, busy road with a tram line, within sight of the Novy Smichov mall.

The Anděl metro station is also just a few meters away.

Once off the street, you walk down a steep, twisting staircase made from large, rough-hewn logs.

At the bottom, you enter another world.

It is a large, subterranean space with tons of exposed brick, dark hardwood floors, and sturdy, El Barrio-branded furniture.The large restaurant is divided by brick arches into several different sections.

With one or two exceptions, the restaurant has a minimum of steakhouse kitsch.

It is the antithesis of Prague's other famous purveyor of Argentine beef, La Casa Argentina, which I wrote about last year.

El Barrio de Ángel has an open kitchen, and you can see and hear and smell what's going on if you get one of the tables nearby.

For a starter, I got the empanadas carne or Argentine meat pies (99 CZK).

They came out piping hot.

The first of the two empanadas was filled with ground beef mixed with olives and had a spicy kick.I really enjoyed the first one. However, the second one was not the same. It was filled with more ordinary and less flavorful ground beef.

I had wanted to try the chimichanga de pollo (99 CZK), but it wasn't available.

V got a rucola salad (129 CZK). It comes with a few cherry tomatoes, red onion, and Parmesan cheese. The salad was pretty basic, and she was given olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dress it herself.She ended up putting in too much vinegar (which I didn't mind, really). But we both thought it would have been better if the restaurant provided some kind of dressing.

The Argentine "Patagonia" burger was made, as you would expect, with very fine, quality beef. It is quite similar in consistency to the burger I had at Potrefená husa.

The low fat content of the ground meat makes it very dense and even seem a bit dry, even though it dripped fat on the plate. I didn't see exactly how it was cooked, but they chef may brush on some butter.

It was very well-seasoned, with a perfect amount of salt. V detected what tasted like cumin in there. The beef was the pièce de résistance here.But the bun was a crime. The supermarket-bought bread robbed this burger of its potential greatness. The beef patty was large and the crumbling little bun just didn't have the right proportions. A small saving grace was that it was nicely toasted.

The burger came with lettuce, tomato, onion, and mayo pre-installed. I'm not a big fan of mayo on burgers and would have preferred to have a choice.

Ketchup was not brought, so I asked for some. It took a while for the waitress to return with it, and I only got a tiny dish.

I didn't want to send the waitress off on another ketchup run, so I rationed what little I had between my burger and fries.

There weren't so many fries, but they were big, crunchy, and hot and, in the end, just enough.

The burger is not perfect, but at 149 CZK, I'd definitely call it a good deal.

For example, Ultramarin makes a very good burger (with a similarly bad bun) and that one now costs 220 CZK.

The Potrefena husa burger has great, smoky ground beef and a good bun, but that one goes for 297 CZK. Both of those burgers come with bacon and cheese, while El Barrio's does not.

For a main course, V got the small 300 gram rib eye with "chimichurry" sauce for 319 CZK. This one was plenty large, but there is a 600 gram version available for 599 CZK.

Anyway, she loved it. She thought it was better than the rib eye at La Casa Argentina. A steak I had there lives on in my mind as the best I've had in Prague, so I'm not so sure. But I don't want to take anything away from El Barrio de Ángel's rib eye. It was excellent.V ordered it rare, and it was cooked perfectly. I was a little disappointed that the first slice she cut for me had a bit of chewy gristle.

But every bite after that was terrific, tender and smoky, with a clear flavor you will not find in Czech beef.

The only other fault, easily fixed, was it needed a few extra shakes of salt.

V got a side order of marinated grilled vegetables (55 CZK).

These were served cold. It was mostly onions and peppers, and a little eggplant.

There wasn't much going on, flavor-wise. We probably wouldn't get those again.

The chimichurri sauce was just OK, with the flavor of marinated peppers and a lot of oil.

We also tried the grilled corn on the cob for 55 CZK.It was pretty good. It was well salted and buttered, with a few black marks from the grill. The only issue here was it got cold quite quickly.

We recently ate at Ambiente on Manesova, and I saw that they charged an astounding 114 CZK for grilled corn.

The lively Argentine music on the sound system awakened some Latin memory for V.

She ordered a bottle of Corona beer with a slice of lime.

Later, while looking at the menu, she regretted it when she saw it cost 85 CZK.

She regretted it even more when she saw that there was wine by the glass for around 50 CZK.

Many bottles of Czech wine were selling for around 200 CZK.

Most of this wine list will not break the bank.

They were out of their Cabernet by the glass during our visit.

The dessert list is quite short, and they didn't have the chocolate fondue with fresh fruit (99 CZK) when we were there. They were out of a lot of things on this day.

On a whim, I ordered the house-made flan with dulce de leche (45 CZK). The menu's English translation called it "Home-made jelly with caramel."

I was expecting the usual cup-shaped factory flan, so I was very nicely surprised when it came out and saw it was the real deal and really made in-house.

It was quite sweet and eggy. The first bite, without any of the accompaniments, didn't make a big impression at first. Then, I tasted the dulce de leche.

Yes, it's basically caramel, but it was perfect. It tasted exactly like the dark, naughty bits of Haagen-Dazs dulce de leche ice cream.Yum! I enjoyed it more with every bite, and I was very sorry when it was all gone. It was simple, but one of the better desserts I've had in a long time. I will confess that, if I could, I'd eat a giant portion of the dulce de leche all by itself.

I went back for a second visit and had it again. For some reason, the portion was definitely only half the size. I thought about complaining, but I didn't have the picture of the first flan in front of me so I could be sure.

However, desserts aren't what will bring customers into this restaurant. For most, it's all about a good steak.

While they didn't get every detail right, they did get the most important one. That was a fine rib eye, nicely grilled. We'll be back for that.

So, if any of you meat-minded Michelangelos want to carve up some well-marbled Argentine beef, feel free to give El Barrio de Ángel a try.

El Barrio de Ángel
Lidická 42
Prague 5 - Anděl
Tel. (+420) 725 535 555


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