A garden of Hansen restaurant (source: hansen-restaurant.cz)

I got a lovely letter last week:

Dear Kasparek,

I’m an expat in Brno. I was wondering if you could recommend me some restaurants for a romantic evening. The kind of food actually doesn’t matter that much. A wide variety of choice is appreciated.

Thank you for your consideration. Keep up the good work!

Hello! K——

If you sometimes ask your friends a similiar questions, you may find handy my answer:

My girlfriend loves Greek restaurant Pontos (22 Křížkovského st.), but someone might mind the sharp light there. On the other hand, it is a budget-friendly place. I think Hansen (corner of Husova st. and Komenského sq.) may also be a good choice – they even have live jazz in the garden these days!

Later, some more tips came to my mind:

• U Kastelána (51a Kotlářská st.) has a beautiful interior and it offers top-quality Czech meals with some French and Italian influences. Prices are above average.
• La Bouchée (33 Údolní st.) is located in a quite romantic cellar and meals like “snail caviar served with toast, butter and salt” may be good aphrodisiacs, I guess.
• Rialto (125 Veveří st.) is among the most expensive restaurants in town, but they try really hard to offer exclusive meals. The menu is frequently updated with fresh and seasonal ingredients.
• Momo Sushi (13 Solniční st.) is one of the best sushi bars in the town (there was a boom of these venues last year).

What is your favorite place to go when you want to spend a lovely evening with your spouse or lover? Let us know in the comments.

Austrian apricot brandy

Hansen has a simple concept: it is located in a beautiful 19th century palace at Husova st., built by renowed Viennese architect Theophil von Hansen (that Hansen who designed Austrian parliament). The restaurant offers the best meals of the traditional Moravian (or Bohemian or Austrian, depends on your point of view) cuisine for reasonable prices.

The restaurant launched a month ago but it quickly got an attention of local media and foodbloggers. I was pretty curious if the orgastic moaning had been adequate. Well, finally I moaned too.

So let’s take look what I and my family had for a lunch:

Beef soup with liver balls - it was simple yet very strong

Duck confit with apple sauce and small potato dumplings

Beef with cabbage, roasted in Dalešice beer

A pear with red wine and vanilla ice cream

I liked several things about Hansen restaurant:

• Top-quality meals, based on original recipes and made of seasonal ingredients.
• Prices. Meals cost from CZK 150 to CZK 250 – which is basically a price for an average food in the restaurants of Brno. These meals vere high above average!
• Extra-helpful waiters with white gloves. Warm plates. Nice interior. Something you would not expect in this price range.
• Dalešice beer – my very favorite brand of beer, made in a small brewery near Brno. I have heard that Hansen restaurant has great wines too.

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A non-profit Alliance Française launches the 16th annual festival of French culture, Bonjour Brno, on Wednesday. Bonjour Brno runs until April 27 and offers concerts, exhibitions, film screenings, several gourmet events and a petanque tournament.

Meet the new Nirvana at Trans Musicales

On March 25th and 26th, legendary music festival Trans Musicales takes place in Fléda club. The festival has been running for 30 years and its purpose is to show new promising bands. Nirvana, Beastie Boys, Björk and The Fugees have been among the past “unknown but talented” performers!

The Popopopops

You can look forward to these bands: Mr Elegantz (Fr), The Popopopops (Fr), The Wankin’Noodles (Fr), Modul Club (Fr), DJ Missill (Fr), Bobby Hardcore Liberace (Fr), Le Pneumatique (Cz), Success (Fr), Dat Politics (Fr), The Popopopops DJ set (Fr), Danton Eeprom (Fr) and Théo Gravil (Fr).

Tickets valid for both days cost only CZK 180, so this is a really great opportunity to spot new trends and possibly tell your grandkids: “Well, I was at the concert of Dat Politics looong before they became so famous!”

Gourmet week in La Bouchée

Restaurant La Bouchée offers French specials between March 30 and February 4. It is not going to be cheap, but I think it will be worth of the money.

Pétanque tournament with pastis degustation

On Sunday, April 11, a pétanque tournament will take a place in Lužánky park. You can taste the legendary pastis for free, if you want.

But wait! There is so much more!

For complete programme, check out the Czech and French website of Bonjour Brno.

I have discovered 5 interesting restaurants employing foreign cooks and offering fresh but affordable meals, together with unique atmosphere.

I am sorry for the quality of pics, I took most of them with my phone.

Bún cá Hải Phòng

There are 14 meals in the menu, all nicely photographed. Vietnamese news channel is on all day long, so you won't miss anything.

This is maybe the most “bizzare” restaurant in Brno, located in a Vietnamese market at Olomoucká st.

Meals cost between CZK 80 and CZK 90. If you are new into the Vietnamese cuisine, have a beef soup. If you want to try something really special, ask for my favorite “tofu-snail” soup.

A soup with snails and tofu

There are knives and forks prepared for those who don’t like eating with chopsticks. Don’t forget to enjoy the green tea served for free.

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The estaminet of Mr. Thuan Nguyen Van

Hanoi in Brno

There are more interesting restaurants at Olomoucká st. I like especialy this one – an untitled estaminet that belongs to Mr. Thuan Nguyen Van (or maybe to someone else, my Vietnamese is really bad). Only 12 people can fit in, so you have to be lucky to get a place during the lunch time.

The true special of this place are hand-made baguettes with coriander and chilli (CZK 50). Of course you can get a beef soup, noodles or rolls as well.

Beef soup with sprouts

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Mr. Gyros

A small estaminet in quarter Mendlánky offers Greek cuisine prepared from fresh ingredients. I had a moussaka and it was cool. My friends enjoyed gyros and burgers, so why don’t you have a big fat greek lunch here?

Moussaka

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Indian restaurant Goa

Fish masala

There is an interesting Indian restaurant at Geislerova st. in quarter Židenice. The owner employs an Indian cook and waiter (or maybe they are from Nepal, I am sorry for having the central Asia so messed up), which gives Goa an oriental atmosphere.

I was always satisfied with my food, although sometimes you have to wait for a long time – anyway, if you want to have a quick lunch, go to KFC.

Great greasy chapati

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Greek tavern Pontos

Yoghurt, nuts and two kinds of honey: a food orgasm for CZK 40

I visited this restaurant to test it for local newspaper – and I was so suprised by their quality/price ratio! It may has the highest price of all the mentioned places, but you can still have a dessert for CZK 40, so try it out. For more information, read my machine-translated review.

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Do you have any “secret” tips?

If you know about more restaurants that offer cheap but great exotic (or just “not-Czech”) food, let us know in the comments!

Source: Wikimedia Commons

As usualy, first bottles of this year’s wine come to market on St. Martin’s Day – Wednesday, November 11.

Although the tradition of tasting the young wine on this day begun in the 18th century, it had been almost forgotten before Moravian winemakers decided to use it as a smart marketing event in the 2000s.

This year, 211 wines were good enough to receive the exclusive mark “Svatomartinské víno”.

Where to get the wine

If you want to taste St. Martin’s Wine, come to the Náměstí Svobody sq. on Wednesday afternoon. Bottles can be bought in wine shops in the whole country (a list of sure-fire shops to go to at southern Moravia) as well as in many cafés and some supermarkets.

I recommend to combine the young wine with roasted goose, cabbage and dumplings.

We’re going to have two grilling party with delicious fishes and good music in Brno during the next week – so move your ass and enjoy the summer, just don’t forget to pack your mints or chewing gums ,)

Filetti di Baccala

Ristorante Rialto will have a Cuban coctail party with a grill and live Cuban music a week later, on Friday, July 24, since 7 p.m. The event will be a wild gourmet all-you-can-eat-orgy, so if you don’t mind the CZK 1,200 (€46) entrance fee, be there.

Luckily, living on a budget doesn’t necessarily mean eating unhealthy defrozen plastic food served in most of the cheap restaurants. I recently discovered (with a little help from my friends Lia and Fandor) the AVIA café restaurant, offering great food for excellent prices, between CZK70-150 (€2.70-5.80) for a meal.

Cannelloni with béchamel and beef

The owners of Avia describe the place as a “puristic restaurant”, which works on several levels:

• The menu has only about 10 items, but there is a new menu every week. (See the current menu.)
• All fods served in Avia are simple jewels of mediterranean cuisine – pasta, fishes, beef and salads – with few ingredients but strong flavours.
• The restaurant is located in a basement of a functionalistic church built in the 1930s – this makes it a good place to have dinner after visiting the villa Tugendhat.
• There’s no music played in the restaurant. (I think jazz would be great, but I still prefer silence to the radio stations played in many other restaurants.)
• Avia is a non-smoking restaurant. But you guessed that already.

I like the interior, but one of my friends thinks it

I have eaten there for three or four times and I was always satisfied. Meals are simple and tasty, dishes are warm (a detail that is often skipped in three times more expensive restaurants), waiters and waitresses are quick and smiling and draught beer from Černá hora is one of my personal favorites.

I am just sad that all these things are still not a standard in the Czech republic.

Keep on rocking, Avia!

More photos

I am the worst food photographer ever, so check out these galleries and machine-translated articles:

• Photos & review by the most famous czech foodblogger, Martin Kuciel
• Photos & review by a Brno’s rising foodblogger Michal Sänger

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Avia is located at Botanická st., close to Art cinema, two blocks from Faculty of Arts.

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Rialto Ristorante

Rialto ristorante launched a new sushi bar, designed in oriental style and offering sushi from Monday to Friday. You can choose from nigiri sushi, maki sushi and california rolls with prices starting at CZK 45 (€1.68) for a piece or CZK 110 (€4.10) for a set of 6 pieces. Rialto also offers “take-away” sushi – a nice way of awarding yourself if you work till late hours.

Asparagus festival

From April 28 to May 31, a special asparagus menu is offered in Rialto. Among the specialities are:

• Gratinated asparagus with Parma ham and Parmesan cheese (CZK 180, €6.70)
• Wild garlic creamy soup with prawns and asparagus pieces (CZK 150, €5.60)
• Swordfish fillet with sauce hollandaise, boiled asparagus and baked new potatoes on fresh thyme (CZK 590, €22)
• Fresh asparagus in wine prepared with sauce hollandaise or wild garlic sauce, new potatoes and Italian smoked ham (CZK 290, €10.80).

See Rialto’s website and the location of the restaurant on a map.

You don’t have to travel to Madrid to taste some of the great spanish snacks (or antipasta) called “tapas”. Ristorante Rialto offers a special Tapas menu from March 12th, 6 PM, until March 15th.

The menu has 15 items, inspired by spanish, greek and even japanese cuisine. I consider these to be the most atractive:

• Warm goat cheese on a potato waffle with pesto and tomato chutney (CZK 160, € 5.80)
• Gambas Ajillo – spicy prawns (CZK 250, € 9)
• Tuna sashimi with orange-mustard dip and fresh mint (CZK 280, € 10.10)

Visit the homepage of Ristorante Rialto for further details.

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