Dejvická 34 Restaurant, Prague: Lunch at the Chef's Table in 2022
Our starter that day didn't arrive with a waiter, but with a man in an apron who had taken it off the stove himself a few minutes earlier - Tomáš Černý, the co-owner and chef. He moves between the kitchen and the guests as if that line didn't exist, and everything you read about his temperament and his passion for cooking turns out to be true.
Dejvická 34 by Tomáš Černý is an Italian restaurant in Prague's Dejvice, named simply after its address.
From the Four Seasons to an Address of His Own
Restaurant names these days get fine-tuned in meetings with agencies; Tomáš Černý painted a street and a house number on his awning. He can afford that plainness: he has more than twenty years of Italian cooking behind him - the kitchen of Prague's Four Seasons under Vito Mollica, running La Finestra in Cucina for restaurateur Riccardo Lucque, and his own Kaprova bistro in the Old Town. The interior, with a bright bar facing the street and a more intimate restaurant down in the basement, was designed by Morix, and its architects admit they came up with the look of this Italian place while traveling around Nicaragua - quite a detour for a Mediterranean interior.
Five Prague Bibs and Two Newcomers
In November 2021 the restaurant was awarded a Bib Gourmand by the Michelin guide. It's not a star - the Bib goes to places that cook exceptionally well and charge modestly, and it's the most practical mark the guide hands out: you travel to a star to admire it, you go to a Bib for lunch. At the time only five places in all of Prague held a Bib Gourmand, and Dejvická 34 was one of just two newcomers that year - the only other new name was The Eatery, while the remaining three (Na Kopci, Divinis, Eska) were holding on to an award they already had. Dejvická stepped onto the Czech Michelin list and landed straight among the regulars.
Ascolana Olives and a Menu for Every Weekday
The starter we were served has a pedigree no aristocrat would be ashamed of - and it was born among aristocrats. Fried stuffed olives all'ascolana were invented around 1800 by the cooks of the noble houses of Ascoli Piceno in the Italian region of Marche: they had meat left over from banquets, so they started stuffing the big local olives with it, breading them and frying them. A way of using up leftovers turned into one of Italy's best-loved starters, at festivals in Marche they're still sold in paper cones, and the American critic Mimi Sheraton included them in her book 1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die. At Dejvická 34 they know that history - the olives come on a sheet of paper that quietly nods to the cones from those fairs.
If you don't want to wait for the evening, lunchtime is the easiest way in: alongside the regular menu, they cook a lunch menu here every weekday - Michelin cooking without the evening bill. And when you book, you can ask for the chef's table: a separate table for up to five people looking straight into the kitchen, where the lunch rush plays out like a concert by a band that never hits a wrong note.
Three Courses from June 2022
I had lunch here in June 2022, a few months after the award. The Ascolana olives stuffed with veal, with a little bowl of garlic mayonnaise, were my first ever - and they were perfect; I understood why people write books about them. The spaghetti with tomatoes and octopus came with Taggiasca olives, the small dark Ligurian olives cured in oil, and the octopus was tender to the point of falling apart - no small feat with an ingredient that turns to rubber so easily. The dessert looked like a dome of milk chocolate, with a light but dense white chocolate mousse inside, plus rhubarb compote and fresh strawberries. We washed it down with a rosé Franciacorta from Barone Pizzini, one of the first organic wineries in Franciacorta, which moves both the grapes and the must through the cellar by gravity; raspberries, currants and blueberries in the glass.
Two courses cost 395 CZK (15.80 EUR), a main course on its own 295 CZK (11.80 EUR). Three courses, finished and quite possibly carried to your table by the chef himself, came to 495 CZK (19.80 EUR).
Dejvická 34
