Restaurant: The Czech Slovak Club
Location: West Hampstead
By Boeing: 1400 miles
By Boris Bike: 2.3 miles
A musty miasma drifted lightly through the panelled drawing room and beams of early evening sunlight cascaded through the regal bay windows to cast mounted coats of arms in half shadow. A light breeze fluttered red velvet curtains, cut from the same cloth as the gilded bench of the coronation carriage. Above the hearth and mantle hung a framed picture of the queen smiling over dining custodians. Opposite, and saluting her, the dignified youth of a dapper Spitfire pilot, pride piercing through his fixed glaze.
It was a scene that evoked a lost age of majesty, measured conversation and the swarthy salutations of men in brass-buttoned blazers. An age when to be English meant having a moustache net, buffed brown brogues and a brow-creasening scepticism of anything overseas. But the beer on the table was Budvar, not Boddingtons, and the waiter spoke with Czech cadence not Received Pronunciation. London’s Czech community have made their cultural home from home in an English drawing room. Anglophiles to a man. And Na Zdravi to that.
The Czech Slovak restaurant in West Hampstead must rank as one of the more surreal dining experiences in London. Situated in a vast Victorian town house it looks indistinguishable from other mansions in the street. If anything it might house a dental surgery or, perhaps, a reflexology clinic. Only a squat, mildewed statue of chef betrays any culinary pretensions. When you walk through the door into a long corridor you are still not sure whether it is your jacket that will be removed or a malevolent molar. At the rear of the building is a spartan bar with a sparse scattering of Czechs drinking Pilsner and cursing at an Ice Hockey game on TV. If the hockey was football and the Pilsner a pint of Pale Ale it could easily be a working mans club anywhere in England.
But beyond the bar, the doors open out onto an unexpected garden that looks like the set of a Monty Python spoof of the Sound of Music. Beyond the rows of benches is a huge log pile next to a BBQ cum-oven the size of a summer house. Set around this, in concentric circles, are chopped stumps for people to sit on. My Czech companion was overcome with its authenticity saying: ‘This is exactly what it is like. This is what i remember, everyone sitting on logs.’
Despite thinking there was an obvious gap in the market for an enterprising chair entrepreneur I found the scene satisfyingly rustic.
The Czechs, like many continental Europeans, embrace the wholesome goodness of the great outdoors. Unlike England and Holland where you can’t swing a cat without striking an architect in the face, vast tracts of central Europe remain unchanged and undeveloped. And while most associate the Czech republic with Prague, a city with few equals for classical beauty and cultural heritage, it is at heart a nation of pastures and country folk rather than pavements and commuter belts.
Sitting on a bench, sipping Budvar, I almost felt part of a kitsch homo-erotic Levis advert where wholesome woodcutters leant precariously, sorry, provocatively, with one leg on a freshly hewn stump. The scene is no doubt indistinguishable from many in Moravia, but then there are hundreds of children that sing in Switzerland but not all of them have the surname Von Trapp.
After enjoying the last hour of sunlight in the garden we moved through to the panelled restaurant, and sat by the window. It was part Fortnums part Fawlty Towers, with not a refresh or refurbish in decades. Though smart it fell someway short of elegant but the framed pictures, maps and photographs leant it a lived-in charm. It was the kind of room I can imagine the late John Gielgud passing many a happy hour reclined in an easy chair. Like Gielgud its Englishness was leant an air of intrigue by a subtle betrayal of its European origins
In keeping with the rustic feel of the garden the menu was hearty and wholesome. The rugged outdoors is clearly an appetite building lifestyle. While a slither of shashimi may suffice for a Tokyo businessman’s daily grind of access and egress of lifts, the demands of the Czech countryside require something a little more substantial. To start they need warming in the biting cold of winter with a piping hot bowl of soup. While i concede that there are more appetising sounding soups than sour cabbage, mine was surprisingly delicious and refreshing.
The main courses included regional favourites such as Schnitzels and rich Goulashes but also traditional Czech fare such as Beef in Cream. But the real treats and the real calories are to be found in the side dishes. The potato pancakes, riddled with bacon, are a meal in themselves and the traditional Halusky dumplings, like doughy gnocchi in a rich, cloying sheep milk bechamel, are more than a match for any appetite. In the end I picked up my serviette and ruefully hoisted the white flag of surrender. It was the first time I had ever left a restaurant with a doggy bag. In the end my jaw just failed to respond to my promptings. It was like trying to eat a sandpit.
Though a tantalising array of summer fruits was offered for dessert neither of us could summon the strength. But we rounded off the evening with a slurp and slam of the local tipple, Silvovice, a fiery plum brandy. It hadn’t been so much a meal as a feast. As European cuisine goes it may not have the finesse of France or the sophistication of Spain but a Czech meal consumed is a Czech contented.
