Czech sausages in Prague must be eaten correctly
I had just arrived in Prague and, coming out of the metro, stood on Wenceslas Square, watching the dome of the National Museum glisten in the morning sun. Before crossing Charles Bridge, before drinking Czech beer to celebrate my arrival, before even checking into the hotel, I had to do one extremely important thing here, at the central point of the city – eat a grilled sausage.
There are rumors that the authorities want to remove the legendary sausage stalls from this boulevard, which resembles a Parisian one but is somehow called a square by Praguers. The district prefect stated that the tents and stalls supposedly obstruct passage and generally spoil the appearance of Wenceslas Square, and meanwhile, this space needs to be made attractive for tourists. Never before, it seems, have sausages been so hard hit by officials...
However, I also had a personal reason to head to the central square straight from the airport. Prague is my second home. In the 90s I lived in the Czech capital for three years and have since regularly visited the city and the friends I made here.
Living in Prague, I deliberately avoided any street sausages and tried to explore restaurants with the then-fashionable ethnic cuisine. Now, when I return to visit, I prefer to eat at new establishments – to see how culinary trends have changed in the city.
But then a Czech friend of mine, who grew up in a Prague suburb, told me that when coming to the capital, the first thing to do is to honor a sausage from a stall on Wenceslas Square. It's some kind of national tradition, apparently. Many Americans, by the way, also believe that a visitor to New York would not behave comme il faut if they neglect to have a hot dog from a local vendor immediately upon arrival – a food that may not be too hygienic but is iconic.
And so I ritually ate my first street sausage on Wenceslas Square. It was a traditional grilled klobása with a tight skin; the pork inside was studded with small pieces of fat, making the meat juicier and more oily. It's no wonder that in Central Europe, sausage has long been a staple food – because long-lasting food helps survive the long winters here. Once I went to visit a friend in Mikulov, a town on the Czech-Austrian border with a castle on a hill. And when I was about to return, my friend's family gave me a whole bag of sausage as a gift – to keep me from starving over the winter, I suppose.
According to a common stereotype, the main fans of sausages in Europe are the Germans. But the Czechs have much more variety in this regard. What they call párek is very similar to a hot dog. And utopenec (meaning "drowned man") is the same párek, but marinated in a brine of vinegar, vegetable oil, paprika, and onions. The most popular type, klobása, originated in Poland (in Polish it's called kiełbasa). They are long, thick sausages that are usually grilled. That's exactly the kind of "klobása" I ate on Wenceslas Square.
The next day I met with two other local friends – Zuzana Danková and Jan Valenta. They organize gastronomic walking tours of the city (the project is called "Taste of Prague"). When I mentioned in conversation that I planned to explore the sausage scene of the Czech capital on this visit, Zuzana hastened to warn me: "Just don't even think about eating anything on Wenceslas Square!"
Puzzled, I tilted my head and immediately remembered the sausage I had tried the day before. "If you eat sausage on Wenceslas Square in broad daylight, for the next 24 hours you'll feel like you've done something wrong," Zuzana explained. "You can only do that if it's one in the morning and you're drunk." Then, just to make sure she hadn't been too late with her warning, she added, "You didn't eat anything like that during the day, did you?"
When I pressed Zuzana and Jan about where in the city they thought the sausages were worth it, they recommended Naše Maso ("Our Meat"). It's a relatively recently opened butcher shop in the Old Town, which has the same owner as the Michelin-starred restaurant Le Degustation and the steakhouse Cestr. I must admit that most of my Prague acquaintances directed me to Naše Maso as soon as I uttered the magic word "sausage."
A few days later I went there and met the head butcher, František Kšana. "We also opened a butcher shop because at our restaurants, guests kept asking if they could buy our meat to take home," the maestro explained to me. I looked around. A shop like any other, nothing special, and moreover small. But at the back of the hall there is a special glass display case where steaks, chops, and yes, sausages are on show. And in front of the display case there are a few tables so visitors can try some of the showcased delicacies right on the spot. And you won't have to eat dry food – sitting at the table, the taster can easily reach a tap with draft beer.
To start, František offered me a sample of two types of klobása: one with beef and the other with pork; each comes with mustard as a condiment. With the beef variety, I found a wonderfully tight skin and a deep flavor profile, accentuated by a layer of chili pepper, the aroma of which lingered in my mouth long after the tasting. The pork one also had a very firm skin, and the filling tasted of cumin and garlic. Both also had a pleasant smoky flavor, which, as František explained, they acquired from smoking on beech wood chips.
"These sausages differ from those sold, say, on Wenceslas Square, primarily in quality. With careful tasting, you can feel the subtlest nuances of their flavor," František boasted.
Then he offered me a "parek", which is made by stuffing ground meat into a casing and steaming it for a while. These fairly simple sausages could be mistaken for a primitive version of an American hot dog, if not for their much more intense meaty flavor.
"A quarter of an hour after eating a parek, you get a very pleasant aftertaste in your mouth," Frantisek tells me. I laugh and wave off his words as a joke. "No, seriously," he insists. "You'll see. It's all about the aging of the meat. Aging makes it not only more pleasant to the taste, but also easily digestible."
The company that opened Nase Maso has developed a detailed strategy for its operations, outlining principles for purchasing meat and building relationships with farmers. It informs potential suppliers of its preferred methods for raising cattle and pigs, ultimately selecting only those farms that meet its quality standard.
This, however, is not the only sausage place in Prague today with such a responsible approach. On the other side of the Old Town, there is a shop called "The Society of Real Meat". Here you can buy organic meat products from livestock raised on open pastures, not in stalls.
Still, it must be admitted that there are still too few places in the city that truly care about quality. So Praguers still have a lot to do in this direction. "To get better, sometimes you first have to go through degradation," Frantisek remarks philosophically. "In the 70s and 80s, meat was rationed, and residents could not have it in their daily diet. After the 1989 revolution, meat became abundant, and people quickly got used to the absence of shortages. But they also got used to the low quality of meat they were served."
On the path to reviving their cuisine, Czechs have already achieved a lot. To understand the historical context in which it existed under socialism, we must mentally return to 1948, when the so-called February coup took place in the country and the communists seized power. It is said that a few years later, by government decree, a cookbook called "Recipes for Hot Dishes" was compiled and published, and all restaurants were henceforth required to cook within the culinary framework it set. If any restaurant's menu included a dish not in the book, that establishment faced serious sanctions. Add to that the fact that food consumption, especially meat, was strictly rationed in all countries of the socialist camp – and it will be easier for you to imagine how dreary and meager a diet the local population was forced to follow for several decades of recent history.
Frantisek is one of those people who actively try to make up for lost time. And judging by the quality of the products he makes and the steady demand for them, this ambitious Czech is on the right track.
By the end of my week-long visit to Prague, I found myself on Wenceslas Square again. It was about one in the morning, and I was heading to the metro, having already had a couple of beers that evening. Then I very opportunely remembered the advice of my Prague acquaintance, and a few minutes later I was happily munching on a sausage from a street stall, standing on the same spot as a week ago. But now, initiated into the secret city etiquette, I was doing it like a true Praguer – at night, slightly drunk.