The worst meal in the Czech Republic

We arrived in the town of České Budějovice(cheskay Boodeyovisei) on a Sunday. It's always a mistake to come to a new town on a Sunday in Europe, especially a small town. Everything was closed, the one place we had found that was open was Mc Donalds and, out of principal, we refused to go there. Finally we found a tiny restaurant called Restaurace Sklep that was open, with a single server, who I'm pretty sure went into the back and cooked our meal as well.

After an amusing round of guess the language we figured out that she only spoke Czech and German. There were individual menus for each language, so when we found something we wanted to eat, she would have to flip over to the Czech or German menu's and try to guesstimate which one we wanted. Luckily they were all in the same order. I ordered a pork loin stuffed with bacon and cheese, and Jess ordered a chicken pasta dish. I also ordered a garlic soup with cheesy croutons.

Actually the garlic soup was quite tasty. It tasted a lot like they had made a french onion soup, but substituted garlic for the onions. It was a nice beef broth with a very very strong garlic kick. There was no garlic mass in the soup only tasty croutons and cheese. All around a very tasty interesting dish.

Then the main courses show up. Jess's pasta came in a cloudy watery sauce, covered in cheese. The penne pasta couldn't really be picked up easily since it was cooked to the point of falling apart with a strong breeze. And it was salty. I mean SAAALLTY. Jess always makes fun of me because I like to eat things "properly" salted, so I sometimes add more salt then she thinks is necessary. This, even I admit, tasted like a big bowl of soggy salt... with chicken!


My meal was pretty tasteless. I know! how do you take a pork loin, stuff it with bacon and cheese and make it tasteless?!?!?! It had enough salt, though all of the salt was added after the food was done cooking not while the ingredients were raw(big mistake). The bacon was actually salt cured meat, not smoked. And of course the quality of all of the ingredients was so low I think the market was probably paying them to take it off their hands. I have no idea how they made this anemic sauce with no flavor. To finish it off perfectly, the meat was way overcooked and dry.. STUFFED WITH BACON and yet somehow they managed to dry it out... The corn in the corner mixed with the peas was obviously shucked from a very unripe corn kob and never cooked. Quite raw.

Bad food can happen to the best of us. Words of advise, never travel to a new small town in Europe on a Sunday. Do what everyone else does, relax, eat the food you bought the day before in preparation for Sunday, and try not to eat at Restaurace Sklep.

-NOM!