Bistro Ansámbl, Prague: Relaxed Fine Dining on Krymská Street
Some families pass a trade down the line. In the Charvát family it split in two: the father, Jan, brews beer - his Bad Flash brewery has its own bar on the corner of Krymská and Donská - and the son, Martin, went into food and worked his way through kitchens that get written up in the Michelin guide. At the end of 2021 the son opened his own place a few steps from his father's bar.
Bistro Ansámbl on Krymská Street in Prague's Vršovice served modern French-Czech cuisine in the style of relaxed fine dining. In the spring of 2022 I had dinner there twice in the space of a month.
A Name from the Theater, a Stint at Noma
Ansámbl is a word from the theater: the Czech for ensemble, a company that plays together, where nobody upstages anybody else. Nobody ever wrote down why the bistro picked that particular name - but the cast matched it exactly. Martin Charvát came up through Prague's La Degustation Bohême Bourgeoise, which holds one Michelin star, and did a stage at Copenhagen's Noma, which holds three. He brought the technique with him from fine dining; at Ansámbl he served it without any ceremony and with beer from the family brewery.
Krymská: The Street That Turned Itself Around
Krymská is a lane not quite four hundred meters long, running down the slope below Vinohrady. People used to give it a wide berth; the turning point came in 2010, when the café owner Ondřej Kobza opened V lese here, and new places then arrived so fast that journalists started comparing the street to Berlin's Kreuzberg and Paris's Montmartre. A bistro with a Michelin pedigree slotted into that ensemble as if a spot had been saved for it.
Trout, Schnitzel, and Beer Ice Cream
I booked by phone with no trouble; both times we sat downstairs. The fried potatoes with Old Amsterdam cheese foam and potato straws for 159 CZK (6.40 EUR) had to be on the table both times: the starter you order a second time because you know exactly what's coming - and that is exactly the point. The marinated and pickled trout from the Bohemian Forest with fennel and horseradish mayonnaise for 179 CZK (7.20 EUR) looked like a painting on the plate and ate light.
We tried two main courses. Linguine with kohlrabi, white asparagus, and parmesan for 179 CZK (7.20 EUR): a vegetarian plate, pasta with a proper bite, and a surprisingly interesting flavor for a dish where kohlrabi does the heavy lifting. And pork schnitzel with grenaille potatoes in a butter emulsion for 239 CZK (9.60 EUR) - diners from England were thrilled with it, and ours vanished from the plate on the spot.
Desserts were 99 CZK (4 EUR) each on the evening menu and both came off well. The ice cream made from Torpid Mind - a twenty-four-degree imperial stout, by the Czech scale of original gravity, from his father's brewery - arrived with sour cherries in cherry liqueur, brownies, and almonds: the family division of labor carried through to the end, the father brewed the beer and the son served it with a spoon. The spiced cream ice cream with stewed apples and apple butter was quieter, but it kept pace. And an eye for detail showed everywhere, from the nicely made menus to the logo aprons; the staff were friendly and happy to make recommendations.
At the time I wrote that if you were only going to visit one new place in 2022, it should be Ansámbl. Both dinners delivered food that tasted flawless, genuinely excellent - and yet the recommendation doesn't hold today. Bistro Ansámbl has since closed; it said goodbye with a short thank-you on social media. Looking back, it is still my find of 2022. It ended the way a proper ensemble should: with a curtain call.
2 Comments
Best price/quality in Prague, I dont believe there is anything better at the moment.
Yes, they have some weak points - service efficiency, attendance of the service and desserts.
Other than that, I believe they are trully great and I am going to recommend it to everyone.
I fully agree!