BUBENEC

I (SVG) offered David to write the intro about Bubenec because he didn't seem so excited about some little funny facts I managed to find about this area among those less interesting, at least to me. As many other parts of Prague Bubenec used to be a little town before it was attached to Prague in 1921. It has very picturesque borders: the huge park Stromovka, the fair ground Vystaviste, Vltava river on the north. The names of the streets derive mostly from important historic facts connected to World War 1 although they were changed during the times of Communism and only those names that had negative connotations with communism were changed back to the original. And now comes the interesting bit: some plates with street names or house numbers wrongly assign these streets or houses to other parts of Prague (mostly Holesovice) while they actually belong to Bubenec! OK now you can collect your jaw from the ground where it fell upon reading such an amazingly interesting fact and go on to read about our culinary experience with the area.

Review

This week's review was at Argument restaurant and after we left it was safe to say there was no argument from us. We really enjoyed the experience of visiting a restaurant that pulls out all the stops to make your experience a positive one. One of the first things we check before going to a restaurant these days is that they have a high chair for little Sammy and we normally like to visit the restaurants early evening because of Sammy's bedtime.

The thing that caught my eye when looking for a restaurant to visit in Bubenec, was the belly pork and the sous vide pork tenderloin on the menu so without delay we booked a table and headed off to Argument restaurant. Our first impressions when we arrived were very positive. The decor is very warm and light. They have a large book shelf opposite to the entrance with a mainly eclectic selection of Czech language books and we noticed on the bar a selection of newspapers, some of them for English readers and the more charming addition of reading glasses for those of us who had forgotten to bring their reading glasses.
We took this as a good sign, it shows that they have paid attention to every detail and as you are greeted and seated it becomes more evident. Sammy took a little stroll around the place and was offered a box of toys to play with by one of the waiters.
The next good sign was the beer. I was too afraid to look at the wine list so as I had a look at the drinks I was very happy to find a non-filtered Uneticke beer 12 degree. After we had ordered we were served an amuse bouche. It has been such a long time that I have been served an amuse bouche that it brought a tear to my eye, and I wasn't paying too much attention to what it was but I did hear the word ragout and I noticed aubergine, pearl barley and peppers in it. We decided due to Sammy being there that we would skip the starters and head straight for the main course, I went for the sous vide pork tenderloin and Anna went for the mussels with white wine, tomatoes, parsley and shallot. I am a big fan of Heston Blumenthal and I have never tried any food cooked sous vide so this was a perfect opportunity admittedly, seeing a pink pork tenderloin was not something that we would expect to be served without a lot of trepidation, but it is sous vide and has obviously been cooking for a long long long time so switching my brain off I dug straight into the pork and I was very nicely surprised. It was delicate and tender and wonderful and was complemented well with the veggies and smoked pureed potatoes. Anna enjoyed her mussels accompanied by a crunchy garlic baguette and because she's not an expert, she didn't mind that they were just slightly overcooked and a bit too salty.