One juggling act travellers face is simple – when choosing a restaurant do you go for something close to the reassuring familiarity of the tourist centre or do you opt for the off-the-beaten-path recommendation? In Prague, the two are not mutually exclusive.
I chose Lime and Tonic’s recommendation of “Crystal Creations” at Crystal Bar and Restaurant specifically for this reason. Tucked into a street just off the Old Town Square, this is the kind of place that tourists can go to if they want to feel like locals for a while. And then, sated, they can traipse along the cobblestones of the city of a thousand spires and be surrounded by night life, bars, clubs and the reassuring atmosphere that a familiar sight provides.
I took the Listener there – mainly to discuss the many vague stories I end up publishing elsewhere. The place is not large but the wide open facade gives a sense of space and the fresh breeze that sometimes circled our table was welcome on the warm summer’s night.
The decor is pop art and pink; not Barbie bubblegum pink – ‘Sex and the City Cosmopolitan cocktail’ pink. It is not off-putting in any way but it did have us craning our necks to appreciate the novelty of it as we took our seats.
We started with an amuse bouche that was a quickly scoffed construction topped with a sliver of salmon. It looked like the chef uses the biscuit cutters my mother used when baking when I was little. I wondered what happened to the extra bits of amuse bouche but I’m sure the kitchen has a few tricks up its sleeves.
The menu curated for Lime and Tonic offers a choice between two starters and two main dishes. Your evening can commence with a slowly poached egg with cauliflower puree and truffle vinaigrette, or chicken consommé with vegetables and roasted mushrooms. The main is a choice between sea bass with saffron risotto and fennel salad, or lightly smoked duck breast with kohlrabi and potato gnocchi.
Between us, we ordered one of each.
The consommé tasted like the chicken had been given a Turkish massage as it was smooth and greasy, just the way I like it. The vegetables were seasonal which is the modern way of saying that we had fashionable vegetables. I appreciate the benefit of eating stuff that is in season, but sometimes you just want to choose whatever you feel like rather than feel like the only person in the room without this season’s Fendi handbag.
The poached egg was oleaginous and I was surprised to see that the truffle vinaigrette is an excellent idea with egg. I wouldn’t have thought to pair the two together, but perhaps that is why I don’t have an award-winning restaurant.
It was around this point, when the Listener and I were sipping our second glass of Prosecco, when she remarked on the food, suggesting that it’s the kind of food you’d expect from Prague’s renowned Villa Richter. This is hardly surprising as the chef at the Crystal is a veteran of Richter as well as a few other top-notch Prague eateries.
Our mains were just as surprising and welcome as the starters. The Listener pronounced her fish to be exceptional which, coming from a picky fish eater, is high compliment indeed. I particularly liked the saffron risotto which had hints of a risotto I last had in Milan under the shadow of the Duomo. My duck breast was not stringy, as duck can sometimes be, and the only reason I’m not going to nominate it as a perfect dish is because the potato gnocchi were a little chewy for my taste.
We wrapped this up with dessert. I knew we would have chocolate mille-feuille with forest fruit but the presentation of the dessert is what won me over. It looked like a brown bread tomato and mozzarella cheese sandwich; artfully done up, it brought to mind the chocolate sculptures that Belgian chocolatier Pierre Marcolini is famous for.
It almost seemed like a shame to eat them.
Almost.
Leaving yourself in Lime and Tonic’s hands like this, you can get a great sense of top quality local cuisine at affordable prices and still be in the tourist centre. I like that various audiences can be catered for like this. Ordinarily, I would have commented on the limited choice but knowing that you’re going to have something that the kitchen likes to show off with means more care and affection goes into preparing the food and that is something which, while you can’t measure, you can taste.
Bon appetit
I enjoyed the Crystal Creations as a guest of Lime and Tonic – expert curators of magical experiences and mouth-watering events.