2024-06-14 09:10:12
On the Brambory restaurant in Prague’s Pankrác, facet dishes do not simply play second fiddle. Precisely reverse. Friends typically recognize potatoes, lox or langoustines greater than the minced meat, tartare or roast with which they’re served. Chef Lukáš Soukup and supervisor Jan Holeček needed to persuade clients that they don’t seem to be solely focusing on vegetarians. Nonetheless, due to the fairly priced lunch menu and potato tastings, they’ve gained a loyal clientele.
Anybody who often strikes to Prague’s Pankrác has absolutely seen a restaurant that opened a brief distance from the subway exit, proper throughout from the buying middle. Its glass-enclosed premises are normally crowded at lunchtime and within the night. On the identical time, the eternally full place is named Brambory, which naturally arouses curiosity. The concept crowds flock right here just for unusual peeled potatoes is, nonetheless, utterly odd. The corporate is legendary for its steak tartar manufactured from beef walnut with chili mayonnaise, grated smoked egg yolk, pickles and capers. However as a substitute of toast, he serves it with potatoes 3 ways.
“To go along with the tartare, you get home-made fries from the Agria selection, which we fry twice in beef tallow, roasted grenaille Jazzy topped with truffle sauce, and butter-roasted rösti from the Emanuelle selection,” entices supervisor Jan Holeček. There are various varieties and every one is appropriate for a distinct preparation. “If I simplify it, cooking kind A is appropriate for traditional cooking and for salads, B for porridge or stir-fries and C for fries or dough. Some potatoes should not grown in black soil, however in sand, so they’re naturally salty as a result of they’re soaked in sea water In addition they differ in shade, some have deep yellow flesh, some cream, and a few even purple,” factors out chef Lukáš Soukup.
The restaurant serves lard-fried potatoes from the Laura selection with Viennese roast, pickled onions, pickles and mustard sauce. | Photograph: Jakub Plíhal
Subsequent to the open kitchen, visitors can discover the potato retailer, by which every selection has its personal compartment. “As an alternative of a cellar, we use this storage field, by which we fastidiously monitor the temperature and humidity. As well as, potatoes are finest at nighttime, so we draw the blinds within the night in order that the solar doesn’t pull out their sprouts or change their shade. We solely allow them to in with mild when the restaurant opens,” explains Holeček . Many of the restaurant’s potatoes are bought from a farmer from Ústí nad Labem, who is ready to develop varieties that the corporate’s operators are accustomed to overseas.
From the Laura selection within the kitchen, they will conjure, for instance, potatoes fried in lard. They serve it with filleted Vienna roast, pickled onions, pickles, mustard sauce and strips of fried potatoes. Based on the chef, he likes Slovak lokše finest, which he prepares each savory and candy. However he additionally performs with Hungarian langos. “As an alternative of ketchup, cheese and garlic, we mix them with minced meat or pickled and sautéed greens,” says Soukup. “We pay the identical consideration to potatoes as every other ingredient. Our facet dishes should slowly be higher than meat, so that folks depart with the sensation that they cannot make potatoes this effectively at house,” Holeček emphasizes.
They’re the one ones within the Czech Republic to have a potato sommelier
By far the best expertise, nonetheless, is the potato tasting, throughout which visitors style 5 several types of potatoes in numerous preparations with one kind of meat. They will select grilled duck breast, slow-braised veal or roasted younger hen. “As a facet dish, you’ll be able to have Gracioza gratin potatoes with gouda, pecorino cheese and cream, Laura grenaille potatoes baked of their skins with truffle sauce, in addition to Agria gnocchi with brynza and seared bacon. Then confit grenaille Jazzy with basil pesto and dried tomatoes or mashed potatoes from the Laura selection with buckwheat, chickpeas and masala spices, which may evoke Indian delicacies,” Holeček enumerates.
By far the best expertise is the potato tasting, throughout which visitors style 5 several types of potatoes in numerous preparations with one kind of meat. | Photograph: Jakub Plíhal
In observe, the tasting appears just like the waiter goes across the tables with a cart, from which the shoppers get a smaller portion of every of the 5 facet dishes on their plate. Once they have tasted all of the variants, they will add those that them essentially the most. Facet dishes change over time, extra varieties and strategies of preparation are added to the menu, in order that the menu doesn’t get boring. As well as, Brambory is the one restaurant within the Czech Republic that boasts a potato sommelier. They are saying they discuss potatoes as engagingly as wine sommeliers write poems about wine. Nonetheless, the remainder of the employees should additionally know the fundamentals.
For desserts, guests can strive, for instance, potato pancakes with cottage cheese and pear jam, or be stunned by mysterious potatoes in clay. “We intentionally do not write anything about them on the menu with a purpose to curiosity clients and I needed to clarify to them what they really get. It is two chocolate potatoes – the darkish one is stuffed with caramel cream and Baileys, the purple one is with cottage cheese and blueberry. We cowl them with dried chocolate with clay and, if , we’ll enhance them with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or cowl them with a shot of Baileys. Then they will shoot you into area,” Holeček guarantees.
In addition they succeeded due to low cost altering tables and a kids’s nook
Chef Jiří Štift from the Collectively community, which additionally consists of profitable Prague eating places akin to Sia or Vinohradský Parlament, got here up with the concept to open a enterprise primarily based on seemingly unusual elements. Soukup and Holeček used to work there. Once they heard concerning the Potato idea, they thought it will be a troublesome however fascinating problem, so that they opened lower than three years in the past after lengthy preparations. “The launch was troublesome as a result of we began operations proper after covid. As well as, individuals did not know if we had been a vegetarian restaurant or if they may additionally get meat from us. So we needed to be affected person,” admits Holeček.
The success was helped when the restaurant got here up with a lunch menu at a worth under 2 hundred, which isn’t a given in Prague. Now a whole bunch of individuals go to it daily. | Photograph: Jakub Plíhal
The success was helped when the restaurant got here up with a lunch menu, which is obtainable for a worth below 2 hundred, which isn’t a given in Prague. “We began to focus on staff from close by workplaces. Once they came upon that we have now good high quality meals at an inexpensive worth vary, they began coming right here within the afternoon or night for a hard and fast menu. We additionally had to determine find out how to get extra individuals to us on the weekend It was once useless right here on Fridays. That is why we have now arrange a kids’s nook on Saturdays and Sundays, which kids can enhance themselves there may be normally a hostess who makes one thing with the youngsters in order that the mother and father can eat in peace,” describes Holeček.
There are already queues for the lunch menu in Brambory, a whole bunch of individuals come for it daily. “Nonetheless, there may be at all times a scarcity of free tables right here even on Wednesday evenings. 150 to 180 individuals come to us for tastings on weekends. And we’re nonetheless kind of a Czech pub, and we aren’t but positioned within the metropolis middle, however in Pankrác, so we are able to solely depend on home clientele, we do not get vacationers right here. We did not even put a lot cash into advertising and marketing. Clients had been happy, so that they began speaking about our firm amongst their buddies, which is finally the very best commercial,” concludes Holeček.