Hospoda: A Taste of Prague and Bohemia

I’m loathe to share the $16 plate of tongue. No wonder we’re hungry. Photo: Steven Richter

       I was excited to see a Czech restaurant land on East 73rd Street.  Reading about Hospoda installed in the Bohemian National Hall brought back memories of many small, old fashioned Eastern European places dotting the Upper East Side when I first came to the city. Praha, TikTak, Old Hungary, Budapest, Café Hindenberg. “Enormously festive Hungarian restaurant with gypsy music and dancing,” Craig Claiborne wrote of Chardas in 1964. He found Vasata’s Czechoslovak food “middlebrow,” though beloved by its patrons.

It’s almost too dark to see the lively graffiti behind illuminated panels. Photo: Steven Richter 

       I know I’m heading for a Czech restaurant where craft beer is a theme and we’re not in l960’s New York anymore, Toto.  Still, it’s a surprise to walk into a blare noisier than bearable in a large square room paneled with contemporary graffiti – actually, “cutting edge” illustrations and humorous hyperbole by Jakub Matuska in dark panels lit from within. Where can we go? I wonder, certain my friends will want to escape this din.

A scattering of potatoes is pretentious, yet surprisingly good. Photo: Steven Richter

       But suddenly it is quieter. A trio of rowdies at the bar have left.  So we’re settling in. There’s something quite winning about the room, a feeling that we can’t possibly be in New York. It’s the Bohemian doings behind the hidden door, the accents, the scent of hops, the wrap-around sketches on brown fabric. As we study the menu, a waitress brings bread - a remarkable sour rye – thickly sliced and smeared with creamy white cottage cheese, sprinkled with chive. And four small sandwiches of steak tartare tucked between crunchy crackers. Amazing beef. Awesome rye.

We caught the chef by surprise in Hospoda’s handsome kitchen. Photo: Steven Richter

       Sadly, the warm, foamy splashes of beer brewed by Draft Master Lukas Svoboda and delivered by the sommelier in small roly-poly glasses are wasted on us. This may be the Champagne of un-bottled beer, but I’ve never tasted a beer I could drink. I take a sip hoping it might taste like something besides beer. The sommelier good-naturedly takes our wine order.

Our companions actually like these seasonable vegetables. Photo: Steven Richter

       Given the Consulate General of the Czech Republic upstairs and brewery vats below (visible through a large glass square in the rich inlaid wood floor - that I hesitate to tread on), I am expecting pork shank, goulash and stuffed cabbage. Not these tortured little tidbits arranged so coyly on the plate.

I slash my fried egg so the yolk runs into the  cauliflower “veloute.” Photo: Steven Richter

       How parochial of me to think the Czech Republic could escape modernism and its tsunami of foam.  My foam-o-meter is always ticking away, eager to detect a froth.  But if something weird works, I reluctantly give in and enjoy it. Scatterings of Prague-style ham are fine, but give me horseradish cream, not tasteless foam please. The variations of potato - boiled, mashed, fried chips - with cottage cheese, milk skin, purslane and lovage oil - are fussily arranged but actually good.  I find market vegetables - zucchini, mushrooms, peppers - edible. The friend who ordered them is delighted. I’m happy for her. Deep frying a whole soft boiled egg, planting it in cauliflower puree and scattering chanterelles sounds like hopeless vanity. Yet, I’m taking a second bite - and a third, a pushover for runny egg yolk.

Two slices of rare lamb are flanked by pulled shreds of flank. Photo: Steven Richter

       Freshly smoked beef tongue – two thick logs on a bicolor swirl of yet another puree - is the best of the four Czech specialties. I agree with my friend who finds the duck “almost good,” and the Styrofoam dumplings unspeakable. Rare slices of lamb atop shredded lamb shank on squash puree have more eye appeal than poached flat iron beef buried under a thick drift of cream sauce.

Under this roiling sea of cream sauce is some poached beef. Photo: Steven Richter

       Hospoda isn’t that expensive, just $16 a small plate, if like us, you choose just two for $32. Three are $45. The chef’s seven course tasting is $88. The service is erratic, sometimes graceful, sometimes scatterbrained, sometimes disappeared. Be careful ordering wines, some half glasses cost $8. And you might find yourself plotting to stop somewhere for a hamburger after dinner. Still, Hospoda is definitely a success on its own terms as defined on its website, “crafting the freshest, locally-sourced ingredients into deliciously inventive meals that unite Old and New Worlds.” Executive chef Oldrich Sahajdak, from a restaurant empire in Prague that owns this outpost, updated the recipes and left chef de cuisine Marek Sada behind. It’s Sada’s first time in New York. He’s learning English. He and his wife eat out together when they can. 

Chef Marek Sada on his first New York visit, explores New York with his wife on nights off.

       Other critics have been rather kind, Sam Sifton a bit facetiously (one star). Adam Platt left hungry too (one star) and recommended going early, when the kitchen is less pressed. Lauren Shockey named Hospoda’s rabbit terrine one of the Village Voice’s 100 dishes to eat right now. I would never go back, but the couple we came with has already booked to return with friends. “I liked both my dishes,” she explains. “I like feeling that I’m not in New York.”