Prague Food Festival, anyone going?
The festival starts Friday up at the Castle gardens, same location as last year. I'm going to be there on Saturday evening, and it's my first time attending. If anyone has any experience with the festival and can give me an impression of past events I would appreciate it.
TIA
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vanderb
Jun 4, 2012 02:08 AM
Sorry for the late review, usual excuses... work, life, etc...
Saturday night (May 26th) at the Food Fest turned out to be a beautiful evening, even though early forecasts called for rain.
We started out at Yasmin, Noodles because we really wanted NOODLES, much to our surprise Yasmin, Noodles (www.noodles.cz) didn't have any noodles. Instead we got a mediocre sausage with sauce and some very poorly prepared roast lamb with onions and gravy. From here we moved to the Spanish (Andalucian) vendor who had some great looking (and tasting) Jamon and olives. The flamenco music and dancing also helped to liven things up on this side of the festival.
Next up we hit Huang He to try and sort out the noodle craving, although they had no noodles they did have a couple of very good Chinese stir-fry dishes both with very nice spicy heat. The first was a Schezuan style fried chicken and then a spicy stir fried pork, although they sound quite a like they were not and "hit the spot" very nicely. Last but no least we stopped at Corinthia Rickshaw for their giant shrimp and futomaki style sushi roll. The shrimp was great, nicely cooked considering the volume they were producing but the roll was only okay, nothing special.
We were disappointed by the limited variety of wine available, perhaps thats because the festival was in Prague which is beer country as opposed to Moravia. It was disappointing to find more Chilean and Slovakian wine on offer than Czech wine, but I guess that was the price to pay for only having one distributor manage the wine. We did attend one of the wine degustations, although our Czech language skill is not great, the degustation was still very informative and fun. Sadly though they were tasting the same wines that were on offer in the festival, nothing different.
All in all it was a good evening and I would recommend this event to anyone who's in Prague towards the end of May. I think next year we'll try the new Spilberk Food Festival in Brno, with hopes for a better local wine selection.
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sasicka
May 25, 2012 12:26 PM
Been today. Nice place although a little too spread out.
Highlights for me: U Zlate Studny (old restaurant, rediscovered), Cafe Amandine (new bistrot, great simple food), Essence in Mandarin Oriental (totally new project made for fun just for the festival, great!) and the last but not least, the Havana Club bar stand with their discovery plate of rums. Will definitelly go back there.
Dissapointments: Chateau St. Havel - really unimpressive, standard food, Le Grill in Kempinski - tasted only the barley risotto, overcooked and very uninteresting.
If I could go back, I'd try Le Patio, it smelled very interesting and the menu looked great, but we passed it very early on and did not return there in the end.
Advice - go with someone, best if 2 or 3 people together, because then you can buy one dish or menu and everybody gets a taste. Buy extra grands, you'll need them especially if you want to taste wine or cocktails (or rums). We spent 30 grands per person today. You can always buy more at quite a few places throughout the park.
Enjoy!
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