2024-02-20 03:11:25
If scientists decided to investigate which foods people most often can’t get a taste for, they would probably include killer specialties or offal. However, the Kamin restaurant in Prague’s Vršovice prepares them in such a way that guests would feel free to add them. It was opened by the brothers Marek and Jan Macháč, who like to be inspired in the kitchen by poor dishes from their native Beskydy Mountains and turn them into experiential gastronomy.
“Come on,” invites the name of the restaurant Kamin, which Marek and Jan Macháč opened last year in Prague’s Vršovice. Customers will find it right next to the Grébovka park, and at first glance they might not be sure whether to take their significant other there for a date, or rather friends for a beer. Part of the space looks minimalist – white walls, austere wooden tables and intimate lighting. At the other end, on the other hand, the sprayers have apparently gone out of their way – the floor is full of graffiti and the sign art is love shines from the wall. But don’t worry, it’s on purpose, the brothers decorated the interior themselves.
“Our menu is just as varied. You can easily have street food here, eat with your hands and slosh around with the sauce. But at the same time, you can come to us for a polished tasting dinner,” assures 26-year-old Jan, who works as a chef at Kamin. Thirty-year-old Marek, on the other hand, takes care of the management and also serves the guests. Both proudly claim their native Beskydy and offer innovative variations of dishes from the Moravian-Silesian borderlands. “The Beskydy Mountains have always been a poor region. So we start from ordinary dishes, but we give them a modern twist,” says Marek.
“You can easily have street food here, eat with your hands and slosh around with the sauce. But at the same time, you can come to us for a polished tasting dinner,” assures Jan Macháč. | Photo: Jakub Plíhal
Acid, sausage, rabbit and entrails
“Take sourdough, for example. You break it down into individual ingredients, you can adjust the cabbage in four different ways, the mushrooms the same, and when you put it back together, you get a completely different dish. Once we even transformed it into a main course with roasted cabbage, with a strong cabbage sauce and mushroom emulsion. Now we prepare it again as a creamy soup with potato confit in cumin oil, pickled mushrooms, champignon oil and lybeck oil,” Jan enumerates several variants of how cabbage can be prepared.
The most famous specialty of the company is, however, the smoked podhrdek. “In the Beskydy, the guys were always used to eating fatty meat so that the slivovice wouldn’t take them off. So we told our grandfather to smoke a pork loin for us, and we cut it into thin slices. Then we made a strong broth from pork legs, heads or skin, in short of all the waste meat. It is prepared for a day and a half, then it is flavored with honey and you have a beautifully sweet glaze. When you spread it on the loin, the meat becomes tender and very tender. For this, we made homemade sour mustard, added mustard seeds, schnitzel and more we baked lard buns. It turned out that people come back to us for this food and recommend it to their friends,” explains Jan.
Recently, he also likes to recommend rabbit on mustard to his guests. “First we bake the rabbit, then we take it apart and make a terrine out of it. On top comes a puree of root vegetables, and as a side dish we serve a foam made of baked potatoes, in which a potato dumpling filled with kidney beans is submerged. I try to push people’s insides as much as possible. I myself would he calmly leaned into it and tried fried liver or stewed tripe. But my brother is holding me back a bit, so for now I’m putting them on the menu in individual components,” admits Jan.
Photo author: Jakub Plíhal
On Tomáš Maca’s fork
I have a complicated relationship with fatty killer treats. As a Moravian, I ate them in my childhood. My relatives put them on my plate, and I couldn’t leave the table until I had finished my morning meal or my breakfast. However, when I was a teenager, I took a back seat and began to radically reject all those heavy foods. After all, I don’t work in the fields to stuff myself with such calorie bombs.
Although under normal circumstances I would avoid the pork loin, I was honestly curious about the “Beskydy carpaccio”. And I did well to try it. The thin slices of meat marinated in a sweetened honey glaze went well with the sour mustard. If I didn’t know it was a chin, I would have guessed it was bacon. The homemade buns served as a side dish at Kamin were then so scented with lard that their taste immediately transported me to my grandmother’s in the countryside, where I spent my holidays as a child.
You’re not going to be a chef, Mom said
The Macháč brothers grew up in the village of Mořkov near Nové Jičín. According to his words, the elder Marek had a wild youth, which is proven by the skill with which he paints graffiti on the floor of a Vršovice business. He graduated from a technical high school with a focus on art and advertising, and at twenty he decided it was time to go out into the world. He moved to Prague and started making a living by shooting promotional spots and video clips. The younger Jan first wanted to become an excavator, because he was inspired by his father, who worked in a concrete plant. During his teenage years, however, he sobered up from his childhood dream and decided after primary school that he would follow in his grandmother’s footsteps and learn to be a chef.
“In Moravia, there is a feast at every opportunity. We always had two kids and one lamb fattened by a family friend. We were used to butchers from an early age,” Jan mentions the experiences that ignited his love for gastronomy. At home, however, they were not enthusiastic about his decision. “My mother works in the insurance industry and she thought that only people with bad grades go to the chef-waiter profession. She said that they take everyone there, and she gave me hell for a while. She saw me at high school, not at an apprenticeship. On the contrary, I I liked that I would have a week of school and a week of practice, so I ended up getting a hotel job,” Jan recalls.
As soon as he received his teaching certificate, he set out to follow Mark into the whirlwind of the big city. “First I found a job in a local four-course restaurant, where I fried steaks, dumplings and so on. But then my brother told me that I wanted to be a cook. He brought me to his acquaintance – chef Peta Heneš, who now cooks in a restaurant in Olomouc Long Story Short. At that time, he ran the Oliva brewery in Dolní Břežany and took me in charge,” Jan returns to his beginnings in Prague. He got another opportunity at the Forbidden Taste pop-up events, during which chefs prepared feasts in surprising places – for example, in the Pragovka factory or the skate park in Štvanice. “It was a terrible flight. People texted the menu, time and place and it was off,” he adds.
“My brother often asks me what I didn’t like in the school canteen. He can remake almost everything so that I like it,” boasts Marek Macháč (left). | Photo: Jakub Plíhal
One-hour chef and a trip around the world
In the following years, he gained experience in the Mediterranean restaurant Aureole located in the highest skyscraper City Tower in Prague, the kitchen of the five-star Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the Michelin restaurant La Degustation Bohême Bourgeoise and the Asian restaurant Taro. In the meantime, he joined forces with Mark, they started shooting cooking videos together and soon moved on to organizing their own events as well. “We started with a series of themed picnics for our friends. We chose several parks and in each one we served something different – sometimes it was sushi, sometimes burgers or fish. Everyone brought blankets, good wine and we feasted,” Marek returns at six fly back
Another joint project was an hourly cook. “People could invite us to their home, for example, when they had an anniversary with their partner or for a family celebration, so that we could cook food for them and not have to worry about anything ourselves. We devised a four- to five-course dinner for them, some of which we added on the spot, and then we served them to them,” explains Marek. But they also tried street food stalls and tasting dinners. “When my brother joined Tara, they liked what we were doing, so they let us organize tastings there on Sundays and Mondays, when they were closed. We came up with the idea of a trip around the world – we paired dishes from different countries not only with typical local drinks , but also with music playlists of songs from the countries in question,” explains Marek.
They gradually came to the conclusion that it was time to open their own business. Originally, they were thinking about a modest bistro where customers would take their food away. In the end, however, they decided to capitalize on their projects with tasting dinners as well. “In the summer of 2022, we started looking for a smaller restaurant with a maximum of thirty seats. We liked the place at Grébovka the most, even if it is a bit tucked away. Most people today still look for restaurants based on internet reviews or via Instagram. Few people just go around and looks for a place to eat,” thinks Marek.
“We are not stiff, we try to communicate with everyone directly, as if we were hosting them at our home. But at the same time, we pay attention to first-class service,” say the Macháč brothers. | Photo: Jakub Plíhal
In sweatpants, but with first-class service
Paradoxically, Jan’s experience with Asian cuisine convinced him that he wanted to focus on Czech cuisine in his own restaurant. “When I had to work with foreign ingredients, of course I managed to somehow prepare them. But I missed that I didn’t know how they taste in the countries for which they are typical. I had no idea, for example, how the natives in Vietnam cook pho or what dragon fruit is when you pluck it straight from the tree. If, on the other hand, I want to cook sirloin, I know every ingredient from the very basics, which is why Czech cuisine is closer to me,” he emphasizes. However, he approaches it so creatively that the dishes are often unrecognizable. “Even if you see rabbit on cream or dumpling with egg on the menu, be prepared to get something unexpected,” promises Jan.
In addition, the menu at Kamin changes every month. “However, we always try to work with seasonal ingredients and take into account what is currently growing. At the same time, we realize that in the summer you don’t want to leave with a belly full of cream, so we use more fresh vegetables to lighten the menu,” points out Jan. When devising the menu, the Macháč brothers also like to be inspired by childhood traumas. “My brother often asks me what I disliked in the school canteen. I didn’t eat enough as a child. I disliked stewed carrots, I didn’t like dill or fish fillets. But my brother can remake almost anything so that I like it,” he praises Mark.
According to him, enthusiastic rumors about the Beskydy restaurant in the heart of Prague began to spread thanks to the informal approach to customers. “We are not stiff, we try to communicate directly with everyone, as if we were hosting them at our home. But at the same time, we pay attention to first-class service,” explains Jan. “In the summer, we go to work in shorts and tennis shoes, which surprised some guests at first, but then they liked it. They can also arrive in sweatpants and a sweatshirt. It’s much more pleasant to eat in comfortable clothes, at least then your stomach doesn’t press in,” he recommends Mark. In the meantime, Jan is already pouring plum juice into the stamper. It would be an eternal shame to end a visit to Kamin other than with schnapps.