Dejvická 34 Restaurant, Prague: Lunch Menu and Pohlreich's Best Restaurant
A month ago I came back from Matera and I still missed the place - oddly enough not the cave houses, but the food. But the shortest way back to Italy doesn't go through the airport - for me it's just a few metro stops.
Dejvická 34 is an Italian restaurant in Prague that has held the Michelin Bib Gourmand since the fall of 2021 and serves a lunch menu every weekday.
I knew it from my first visit, when chef Tomáš Černý came out from behind the stove to serve me himself. What I didn't know was that I was having lunch at a restaurant that would be on television the next night.
Salmon with Rhubarb, Monkfish in Ham
The lunch menu ran to three courses and opened with a starter whose name was as long as a whole sentence: torched salmon with rhubarb velouté, Gin Mare essence and fresh strawberries. Velouté is one of the classic French sauces - stock thickened with a light roux to a silky smoothness - and the rhubarb gave it the acidity a fattier fish needs. Rhubarb and strawberries, a pairing you'd more likely find in a pie, had ended up in a savory sauce here - and it worked beautifully. The salmon was seared on the surface only, and the essence of Gin Mare, a Mediterranean gin distilled with olives, rosemary and thyme, added a whiff of the coast. The dish tasted wonderful and looked beautiful.
The main course took a Roman classic and gave it to fish. Saltimbocca - literally "jump into the mouth" - is a thin slice of veal with prosciutto and sage in Italy; at Dejvická 34 the monkfish stood in for the veal. The combination of firm fish, dry-cured ham and sage was perfect and underneath lay a creamy kroupoto, a risotto in which pearl barley stands in for the rice. Pieces of tomato brightened the plate up nicely. A short linguistic aside: whether the correct Czech spelling is krupoto or kroupoto had to be settled by the Czech Language Institute of the Academy of Sciences. It allows both - what matters is that nobody misses the rice.
The dessert was a small piece of architecture: a dark chocolate mousse hidden inside a ring of thin chocolate, and under the ring a plum compote with amaretto. A gorgeous-looking dessert that tasted flawless. Anyone who has ever tried tempering chocolate at home knows that a thin ring holding its shape is a real piece of kitchen craft.
The Day Before Pohlreich's Verdict
What made that week unusual was television. Dejvická 34 entered Pohlreich's Best Restaurant - a TV Nova show based on a British format, in which twelve places go head to head in pairs built around the same kind of cooking. In the Italian round it came up against Di Nuovo from Horní Jirčany; I was having lunch the day before the episode aired. Dejvická 34 won it, and Zdeněk Pohlreich praised how clearly the plates show who the chef has cooked with. The twist is that Pohlreich owns an Italian restaurant himself, Divinis, also with a Bib Gourmand - so the Italian round was decided by a man who runs a rival place in Prague. If anything, that gave the verdict more weight.
How the Bill Compared to My First Visit
Three courses came to 699 CZK (28 EUR), the main course with dessert to 599 CZK (24 EUR) and the main course on its own to 479 CZK (19.20 EUR). Compared with my first visit, Dejvická 34 was asking noticeably more - and as I paid, I couldn't have cared less. The lunch menu has gotten pricier, but the cooking has improved even more; I walked out genuinely thrilled.
Dejvická 34
