Sunday, December 29, 2019

Field, Prague (*)

Prague has only two Michelin starred restaurants, La Degustation Boheme Bourgeoise and Field, both holding one star. The latter being open during lunch and dinner while the former just for dinner. 

While being in the city we visited Field to try some local refined cooking. Field is located in a quiet neighborhood in the north part of the city center easily accessible on foot, just a few minutes walk by the central place and the clock. The cooking of  Radek Kasparek, head chef of the restaurant, is modern with local Czech characteristics. The decor of the salle is modern and minimal with wooden floors, light grey to white walls, wooden tables and no tablecloths. Big windows provided plenty of daylight on our table during our lunch. 

The restaurant offers a ten course degustation menu and a four course set menu which is available only for lunch as also an a la carte menu available both for lunch or dinner. All menus can be ordered with wine pairing (there is a regular and a more fancy wine pairing option) or with non alcoholic drinks pairing. We opted for the lunch menu which we supplemented with 2 extra courses from the a la carte menu. 



We started with some amuse bouche and country bread. All were very very good, the bread having great texture and flavor nicely complimented by the amuse bouche presented like a painters palette. 


Our first course was char with miso, apple and cider. Char was raw served in an acidic apple broth having great flavor. 



Chanterelles, curd, brown butter and yolk. A very tasty dish with a classic winning combination of ingredients, although a bit heavy on salt. 



Frog, fennel, sorrel and bacon. You don't often come across frog on any menu in Greece, with the exception of Ioannina city which traditionally serves fried frog legs, so we though we should give it a try. Quite a small portion for an a la carte dish as you can see in the photo above. I wasn't very impressed by the whole result too. 



Sturgeon, cabbage, black trumpet, broccoli. Sturgeon is also a rare dish to come across in Europe let alone Greece. Here it was very well cooked with gelatinous texture supplemented by very tasty mushrooms and an excellent sauce. 




Beef, watercress, jerusaleam artichoke, fava. This was the main course of our meal and it was a let down. The beef was very well cooked although again very heavy on salt while both pieces were of mediocre quality having a lot of fat and elastic tissue. Moreover fava beans should be excluded from any menu because of their potential life threatening harm to certain people that are not aware of it. There are so many ingredients available, why use fava in a restaurant? 




Defrutum, chamomile, madeleine, rosehip. Amazing predesert and mignardises were offered afterwords. 





Plum, kefir, sheep cheese and tarragon. A very refreshing and tasty dessert. Plus a very good espresso was complimentary in our meal. 



Service was excellent throughout the meal, relaxed and professional. 

In general this was a nice meal with some misfires. There is good quality of ingredients which are skillfully prepared and presented although there is also excessive use of salt in almost every dish I tried.