The Rock and Roll Vegetarian has been to Prague, Czech Republic, and has sampled some of the vegetarian options.  Let’s just be honest, the Czech nation is not known to be the center of vegetarine cuisine, and is instead known for “Traditional” Czech dishes such as goulash, roast duck, and suckling pig.  Especially in the tourist visited areas.

While I was there I visited some vegetarian restaurants, but also ate vegetarian food around town at regular spots.  I will be doing a review of some of the vegetarian spots soon.  But let’s talk about what you might find at a “traditional” place.   The kind of places that really aren’t about eating vegetarian, frankly.

Most restaurants of this style had a “vegetarian” section on the menu, and almost all had these two dishes – fried cheese (sometimes a few different kinds) and croquettes.  So, what the hell, I went for it, and got both!!

I had a fortunately great river view for this meal, and a very tasty local beer.  And my beautiful wife.  So how bad could it be?

Now realize, this was no special gourmet place, just a typical, tourist type restaurant that was not about vegetarian high cuisine.

So what is fried cheese?  A 6 square inch, 1 inch thick, brick of semi hard cheese, breaded and then deep fried.  Yes, that’s right, breaded and deep fried.  And the cheese was kind of a white semi tastless fare.  It was kind of scary.  I did eat about half of it though – something to go with the great beer I guess.

Next up, croquettes.  Now, I’m actually not really sure what a croquette is supposed to be, and I’m sure in France it may be something very tasty, though I’d love to find out….In Czech Republic, at where I was eating it was a beautiful golden round ball, between a ping-pong ball and marble in size.  So I gave it a cut, to reveal its inside, which was mashed potatoes.  These balls were also breaded and deep fried.  I dipped them in ketchup and had a few.   Also, beer did help, I guess.

So that’s it!  Some of what a vegetarian has to look forward to in Prague, if one doesn’t search for something better!  We did – and we found some great food.  More on that soon.