A weekend in Southern Bohemia – Part I

I mentioned before that we have a weekend house near Pisek. We missed my mom’s birthday due to our exams and this weekend we wanted to catch up. Mom actually lives in the weekend house now, because she started a big (re)construction project there. She decided to turn the weekend house into a place suitable for year round living and so now she watches over 5 workers everyday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. She hasn’t been to Prague for 2 months now.
On Friday she invited us to the Středověká krčma in Pisek, a place we’ve never been to before. Oh man, what a bizarre place this is :-) It’s something like a medieval tavern with a show. We were greeted by a barman dressed in old, dirty clothes. He said smth like “What the hell do you want here?? You wanna stuff yourselves and have some booze?? Get your asses seated at the table over there!” Uhm, this is the way they talk there and it is supposed be that way. They try to make us feel like they think people felt in the middle ages. To make it short, service is arrogant and talks in a weird way on purpose, it is part of the whole concept. When they take away your plate or glass they yell “Máš dožráno??” or “Máš dochlastáno??” That’s just the way it is there.

There is this hangman hanging from the ceiling, I sat right under him.

There was some sort of clown entertaining us the whole evening, he was even funny sometimes.

Some people dressed as monks began torturing young and pretty “witches” later, the witches even flashed their bare breasts for a couple of minutes!
The climax of the evening was a fire show. I have to say that I was impressed. Not by the show itself (although it wasn’t bad at all), I have seen better and bigger fireshows. Instead I was wondering how they could get the authorities permissions for performing a show like this inside of a building. There really isn’t much space inside and the minute they lit the fire it became very hot! There were all sorts of inflammable things lying around like hay, rugs etc. It was fun to watch though.

Now for the food…it’s alright but nothing spectacular. It’s just this standard fare like you would find in thousands of other restaurants, greasy meat all the way. But on the other hand, what would you serve at a place like this? The portions are enormous and so I would think twice before ordering a starter, maybe only one to share between 3-4 people.

A picture of the koleno above is all I have. It was very dark inside and so the rest of the pictures didn't turn out at all.
We also had some kind of beef tartare on dark bread as a starter, it wasn't bad but desperately needed salt. I had half of a duck with dumplings and cabbage and is was the best dish of the evening, half a duck sounds big but it was quite small, it was rather a duckling and just enough for 1 person. Husband ordered this koleno shown above, it was huge but fairly average. Mom ordered pork ribs with honey, these were ok, but drenched in sauce which made them very difficult to eat.

The prices are high and not only for Pisek. Keeping in mind that every person additionally pays 150 crowns entrance fee, I didn’t expect the food to cost that much. My duck cost 390 kč, the koleno was around the 270 kč mark and the ribs around 220 kč. It’s ok for Prague, but otherwise this is probably one of the most expensive restaurants in Pisek, but you are really paying for the show here.
Did we like it? Yes, it’s a touristy concept, the food is overpriced, bla bla bla…but I thought it was fun! It’s not a place were you would go for a romantic dinner or family celebration and I wouldn’t go back for food, but it serves it’s purpose as a show. And this is how the place should be taken, as a touristy medieval show with average food.