Da Clara: Home-style Italian restaurant in Vrsovice

Aubergine and I went there for our anniversary last weekend. I’m not going to write about the restaurant, because Brewsta at expats.cz has already written a review that I concur with entirely.

Bun Ca in Malesice Market

On Sundays, Aubergine and I have the custom of going to the huge Vietnamese market complex in Malesice. Aside from the household supplies and countless dodgy textile stores, they have a couple of Asian grocers that actually sell fresh green stuff (hey, this is the Czech Republic) and some luncheon places that mainly serve the market workers. We usually go to the one at the end, run by a matriarch and her family, advertising Pho Ba Dac Biet (home-style). There we sit huddled over a formica-topped table and watch Vietnamese state TV while having a big bowl of pho ba (beef noodle soup w broad rice noodles), or construct-your-own bun cha (crispy barbecued pork belly, not greasy at all, in a marinade, along with a bowl of rice vermicelli and a plate of greens. You spoon the marinade on the noodles, break up some greens on top and eat it with a slice of pork belly.) My favorite dish there however is bun ca, fish soup with rice vermicelli. They make it from carp, the local cheap farmed fish. Normally I avoid carp as it is rather muddy and has a mushy texture, but the soup is made from tiny crispy fried bits of carp, in a broth with hot peppers, tomatoes, dill, onions, garlic, and scallions.

The pink lump in my bowl was a big cake of fish roe. I don’t know if it was carp roe, which I never would have thought about eating, but it was certainly edible, whatever fish it was. Probably carp just due to the size. I shared my roe with Aubergine, who never met a fish egg she didn’t like. Note also the condiments on the table, including a bowl of crisp fried onion and hot pepper in oil (white bowl in background), which makes pretty much anything delicious.

Welcome!

Zucchini and Aubergine like nothing so much as a no-frills eatery that does a handful of dishes, does them home-style and does them well. It doesn’t matter if it’s a soup dumpling place on Wellington Street in Hong Kong, an old hippy couple grilling fresh fish by a shack on a tiny Croatian island, or a matriarch and her family serving pho and bun dishes to fellow Vietnamese in a wholesale market on the outskirts of Prague. It’s tasty, it’s simple, it’s made with pride, and sitting beneath florescent lights at a formica-topped table and eating it makes us happy.

We eat at other places. We eat at regular mid-range restaurants and we go to high-end places sometimes, too. We are not inverse snobs, or we hope we aren’t. But even at the high-end, our heart goes out to places where the owner or owners are there in the restaurant, taking pride in their food, and making the customers feel at home.

Zucchini and Aubergine like most cuisines, when they are cooked with competence and with feeling. We do not turn our noses up at grilled pork knee with mustard and horseradish, served beneath chestnut trees in the garden of a Czech pub. We do not turn down “the best fish and chips in East Devon.” And we will be damned if we go to New York and not have a knish at Yosha Schimmel’s, the pastrami at Katz’s, or the made-at-your-table chopped liver at Sammy’s Romanian Restaurant. But we do prefer cuisines with a bit more spice in them, and cuisines that appreciate fresh vegetables.

PS As the Yank of the team, I’m Zucchini.