Vallmo Restaurant, Prague: Six Courses from the Crystal Pin Winner
This year Google handed out an award to Czech restaurants for the first time, the Crystal Pin. The jury wasn't a panel of critics but a set of numbers: at least three hundred reviews and an average above four and a half stars on Maps. The winner for Prague was Vallmo.
Vallmo is a tasting-menu restaurant in Prague's Podskalí, a short walk from the Náplavka riverbank, rooted in modern Czech cooking and seasonal ingredients.
Poppy in the Name and in the Dessert
The name sounds as if the wind had blown it into Podskalí from Stockholm, but the answer is actually Czech: vallmo is Swedish for poppy. The restaurant opened in the second half of 2019 under chef and co-owner Martin Makovička, who simply translated his own surname. Poppy became the signature of the place: it runs through the interior, and a poppy seed pudding crowns the menu. A few steps away are the riverbank, my favorite wine bar Na břehu Rhôny and the Puro Gelato ice cream shop.
Makovička runs the kitchen himself. He was born in Třeboň and has done stints in Vancouver, Dublin and Prague's Grand Cru. And after this evening I'm sure of one thing: a Michelin Bib Gourmand would suit this place.
Six Courses and One Odd-Numbered Problem
The tasting menu ran on fixed arithmetic: six courses, three of them starters, two mains and a dessert. The table picks the starters and the mains together; dessert everyone chooses alone. The menu cost 2,790 CZK (110 EUR) for two, though it would be wrong to assume it only works for even numbers - they put the tasting menu together for three of us without any fuss. The one dish an odd number can't stretch to is the lamb neck, which only leaves the kitchen in pairs. Before the first starter came a slice of warm bread with a house-made cheese spread: an unusual warm-up, and it worked.
The starters read like a showcase of what Czech cooking can do once it stops being shy. The asparagus with hollandaise arrived buried under roasted chopped peanuts - a combination I'll remember for a long time. A piece of fried sauerkraut pancake came alongside the carp tartare in cucumber soup with gin; carp is a fish most of us eat just once a year, at Christmas, and this was my first time tasting it raw - the delicate, carefully seasoned flesh was more than up to the job.
The third starter dug even deeper into forgotten ingredients. Lamb sweetbread with morel sauce and pan-fried asparagus: sweetbreads were a favorite ingredient in the kitchens of interwar Czechoslovakia, then they vanished from menus for decades, and now they are coming back to top restaurants as a delicacy - usually veal, so lamb was a first for me too. The bold morel sauce made a superb partner.
They Pour the Sauce at the Table
The mains added a bit of theater: the sauces go onto the plate at the table, the bone marrow with the flank steak arrived diced, and the mash came in a little bowl of its own. Flank steak is still a rare cut on Czech plates - and it was also the only stumble of the evening, because it came out tougher than that cut needs to be when it's cooked right. We told the waiter straight out, and the staff handled it entirely professionally. The duck breast with smoked rhubarb looked lonely on the plate at first; then the waiter poured the sauce, the plate came together, and the smoked rhubarb was pure luxury.
The desserts played an old tune. Kosmatice - an elderflower fritter that takes its Czech name from kosmatý, meaning shaggy - is an old Czech treat you're more likely to run into at your grandmother's than on a tasting menu; here, in a light batter, it came with chocolate cream and sour cherry sorbet, and it soaked up no oil at all. The star of the evening, though, was the poppy seed pudding with grilled strawberries, served at the table out of a big pot: all three of us agreed it was the best thing on the whole menu. To my delight I could taste a faint smokiness in it too.
We skipped wine that evening and went for nonalcoholic mixed drinks: ginger with goji, and bitter orange, 145 CZK (5.80 EUR) each. Nonalcoholic pairings with a tasting menu are still the exception in Prague - and at Vallmo the gamble paid off.
Saying Goodbye to the Chef
There were three of us at Vallmo; the booking came back confirmed within minutes and our questions about the menu got answered just as fast - it pays to write ahead. Manager Jakub Kubíček walked us through the evening, advising us on the order of the courses and on which dishes were the standouts; we got through six courses comfortably in three hours. The tasting menu cost 2,790 CZK (110 EUR) for two, and the nonalcoholic drinks 145 CZK (5.80 EUR) each.
Vallmo
