Tasting Prague, a review of Cestr, and random meals with interesting people

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Dobre den! Jakes Mate? And I would respond Velma Dobre to the many waiters and Czech locals during our travels in and around Prague, basically answering the question how are you with Velma Dobre, very well. However over the past 24 hours I got a chance to speak over meals with a Malaysian Attorney based out of Kuala Lumpur, a Brazilian art student who moved to Prague to better his economic opportunity and randomly met one a Czech and Prague local film director for children's programs at an art university holiday party which he graciously invited me and my mates to last night. I thought it fitting to make this post about the food, and there is so much here to write about I hope I do it a fraction of the justice it deserves, and the wonderful and colorful characters and interesting people I have had the opportunity to meet during my travels, but let's get to the food, and beer, first and foremost.

Before coming to Prague I had read everything you can access to get a general sense of the food scene here, and I found some of the reviews interesting, but nothing had me extremely excited to sample Czech cuisine, and admittedly I was more pumped to have pizza in Italy. The reality of the situation here is amazing and I don't think I am overstating it. The meals in Prague are some of the best food I've ever sampled. Most traditional Czech restaurants here serve meats that make the mouth water, boar and pig knuckle, fine oyster cut steaks, half of a village duck, quarter of lamb rack, peasant leg, and each dish seems to have one of the better comfort founds I've tasted, bacon potatoe dumplings which are soft and flavorful. Anyone who has met me knows that I pay attention to value as much as cost, and the meals here stand up to anything in the US and I would make the case are better than we experienced in Italy. The best and most expensive meal we had in Italy, and it was truly great, was three courses and about $60 euro, while the best meal we had yesterday was in Prague was 3 courses for about $25 dollars or 628 Czech Kronos. Now let me Segway into telling you about the best restaurant in Prague and if you only go one place if you visit Prague this establishment comes to you from me with a 5 star rating, and only good things to say. Cestr, but let me also take this next paragraph to tell you how we ended up at Cestr and it all started by going on one of the infamous Prague Pub Crawls.

Two days ago oneof my travel companions and I were talking with some folks staying at our hostel and we asked what was a good recommendation for something to do. Their first respons was to go on a pub crawl. At first I was skeptical, i have seen pub crawls in the south side of Pittsburgh but never been a fan of the idea of a pub crawl, but the gentleman who suggested the idea said it could be an easy way to talk to people, and I was sold. I put a high price on being able to interact with people when I travel and therefore if a pub crawl helped put me in a position to talk with people I thought I would enjoy it. We made our way two nights ago to the checkin point for the pub crawl, met a couple Americans living abroad who had come out for the event and to my right I heard a group of UK girls talking in distinctively British accents, to my left were the German men who seemed to be around the same age. It was a mixed crowd and we started towards the first bar at 9pm. When we arrived a guy came up to me and told me he was a US student amed Jim, and he was traveling solo and asked to jpin our convo. It was great to meet Jim and when I turned back towards the bar to get a Czech Pilsner and shot of asynth I met Valerie. Valerie we exchanged conversation and she joined our small group. we spent much of the night with Jim and Valerie and exchanged travel experiences and knowledge. Jim was an accounting student, from Conneticut, and studying in South Carolina, he had come from his school abroad because transit was so cheap. Valerie as I would learn through our conversation was traveling with her boyfriend Richard, and she was an attorney with the government of Malaysia and worked in the Patent office. The funny thing is how Valerie and I started our convo, I think asked about her work and she mentioned it and we started a great conversation on how Malaysia signing into the Trans Pacifix Partnership may impact Malaysia. Valerie had some great commentary on the drug approval process differences between Malaysia and the US. Many of her comments and others I have met offer some really great and simple insight into ways the US can be improved, especially when it comes to pricing of pharmaceutical drugs. At this point you might be asking if I was at a work conference or a basement of one of Pragues most popular bars discussing the TPP, and it was the later so I took ample time to enjoy myself during the pub crawl. As the night wore on, the group we had started with seemed to dwindle and towards the 4 o'clock hour we turned in for the night/morning but not before agreeing to get lunch tomorrow with Valerie. We parted ways and made it back to our hostel. While I thought the bar crawl experience would be overrated I actually think it's a must for anyone considering how to spend at least one evening in Prague, and I did get to meet and talk to people like Jim and Valerie so I was happy with it.





The next day we awoke at 11am, got ready, and arranged to meet Valerie outside the Cartier store I old town square. We arrived and old town square continues to look amazing each time we pass it, with the food stands, lights and all the other wonderful spectacles. We let one of my travel companions. jarred, pick the restaurant and he choose Cestr. If you look up Cestr Yelp is going to say it's one of the more expensive options in Prague, but it's important to note the prices here are relative to Prague and from a US dollar perspective it'S relatively inexpensive.

We arrived at the restaurant de armed by bull horns on the golden Windows, and a huge white Hefner cover in the restaurants logos.i took a picture next to it since I wanted to remember the experience.

We initially were told reservations would be an hour wait, and decided to get a dark Homemade porter while we waited for a table, and not even two sips into our beers and he waitress had returned to tell us our table was ready. We were seated and the menus I had read about were dolled out to each of us in an envelope type fashion. The options on ways to produce some of the most fantastic meat dishes seemed endless, sashimi, tartar, roasts, soups, you name it they have it.also the cool part was they had a small map of the cow with numbers next to each meal and where you slice of meat was from on the cow. It was an amazing experience. i could go on and on about the meal but it was a carnavores paradise, and that was just the food. Valerie told us a lot about Malaysia and Southeast Asia. It turns out she was here wi her boyfriend Richard. Apparently he was entertaining clients from Japana on a trip his Slovakia office had set up. Essentially Richard works in finance and sales out of Kuala Lampur and serves Japanses customers in a not somsifferent job than mine, however the lack of regulation in Asia still allows for a bit of a Wild West type of environment with much unexplored territory was my takeaway. We shared perspectives on public transit, culturel opinions towards cigarette use, and a variety of issues comparingmand contrasting ideas. For some reason many of the foreigners I've met seem to start all political conversatiobe on my thoughts on Donald Trump as president. I can't understand why people of the world would think Donald Trump is doing what he is doing is anything more than a publicity stunt setting himself up to benefit after the campaign is over by means of a TV show or a book of some sort. But I digress. Lastly since I am Prague and I have this habit of going to a McDonald's in every country I visit and the Big Mac meal was extremely fresh and customer service excellent.



The food was amazing and if you are reading this blog and want to know about all the pictures and food attached to this article let's catch up for coffee if your in downtown Pittsburgh in the next few weeks or on a weekend.

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