North Vietnamese Cuisine (and a Little Taste of Italy) in Prague

A fragrant bowl of pho at the Sapa market complex in Prague ...

... and a garlicky bowl of al dente pasta with shrimp at Una Bella Canzone in a quiet residential section of the city

Prague is city that is filled with surprises - at least if you go expecting to find only sausages, ham,  and beer, though there is plenty of that to be had. Many residents we spoke with, for example, were unaware that some of the best Vietnamese food you'll ever find anywhere was just a short metro and bus ride away from the touristy center of town. 
Sapa, named after Sa Pa, a town in North Vietnam, is a sprawling market complex filled with restaurants, shops, and  seemingly endless warehouse space jam-packed with anything and everything you could ever need to start your very own department store:

Among other things, a slaughterhouse complex used to occupy the space

 In fact, Prague is home to a Vietnamese community of over 60,000, many of whom came during Communism as part of work, study, and cultural exchange programs. If you happened to catch the episode of No Reservations where Bourdain travels to Sapa in search of a pho joint, you might have the mistaken idea that the people here are unfriendly and suspicious of outsiders, but this is just another example of Bourdain exaggerating and distorting the truth to create television drama.

Did the people we interacted with at Sapa speak English? No. Do we speak Vietnamese or Czech? Again, no. But the differences stopped there - we had an awesome time and found everyone to be incredibly hospitable. Take the place where we got our pho:

 Hmmm ... how to order when no one speaks the same language? Simple! Have Poppa Trix draw a picture:

You may laugh (our server sure did) but that drawing landed us our luscious bowls of pho:

It helped that the guy who seemed to be the owner thought we were German for some reason, and kept saying "Danke" and "Bitte" to us, so we were able to ask for "zwei wasse" to quench our thirst!

But you don't think we went all the way to North Vietnam-within-Prague to just eat one meal, now do you?  We were intrigued by this man, who spent a good chunk of his day grilling up meats on this outdoor grill:

After he grilled the meats - which were placed in a grill basket - he handed them through sliding glass doors to a woman in this restaurant:

We had no idea what sort of dish was being made with this or what to ask for, but it smelled good and we knew we had to have it! Luckily, our grilling friend saw us go into the restaurant and poked his head in and told them what to do. He did us right for sure, because here is what we got:

You put some noodles, some herbs, and the meat into the salty-sweet broth and ... close your eyes and enjoy. This was amazing - such a great blend of crispy, charred, slippery, and crunchy textures. It's so good you need to see it again, from a slightly different angle:

Sorry for the Coke product placement ...

We noticed that the one thing all of the restaurants stocked that wasn't Vietnamese was the beer - that was always Czech!

We also learned that Prague - like many Central and Eastern European cities - is head over heels in love with Italian food. (I say that knowing that there are nearly as many regional Italian cuisines as there are hairs on my head!)  Our research into a good representation of Prague's interpretation of Italian food led us to Una Bella Canzone, located in a quiet, residential area of the city:

Whether or not the food we had was authentic, I will leave to those who are better acquainted with the real thing than I to decide - but the fact that it was fabulous could not be in dispute. Al dente pasta in the Czech Republic? Oh, my yes! We started with the shrimp dish at the top of this post (Spaghetti olio, aglio e gamberi, olivový olej, česnek, krevety), and also a spaghetti with beef and pork ragout (ragú z hovězího a vepřového masa):

Don't let the fact that the pasta dishes on the menu are translated as "pastries" be off putting! This stuff was perfectly cooked.

For our mains, we had pork mignon with roasted rosemary potatoes (Medailonky z panenky s opékaným bramborem a rozmarýnem ):

Not the prettiest plating perhaps, but it was quite good - the rosemary potatoes were nicely crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. But the hands-down winner of the evening was this dish:

That, my friends, is a beef steak wrapped in ham and baked with buffalo mozzarella (Steak ze svíčkové balený v parmské šunce a gratinovaný s buvolí mozzarellou ). Yep, it's a lot of plate. It sounds a bit over-the-top, but trust me, this was amazing. I know what you're thinking: "Trix, everyone says you can't get a nice cut of beef in Prague without it being overcooked." Well, behold a perfectly medium rare:

This photo doesn't really do it justice - it was so soft, so tender, so juicy -  like cutting into warm butter ...  slurp. I guess Prague really unleashed my inner caveman, because I sure did chow down on some meat.

And there you have it - whether you crave Vietnamese, Italian, sausages, beer, haute cuisine, or raw meat, Prague has something to make your tummy very, very happy. Don't miss the next installment in my travel series - you never know what I'll eat next!