photo: Jiří Zemen, PrahaIN.cz/People’s canteen Tešnov
In the last few days, PrahaIN.cz has already covered the St. Martin’s feast, which inherently includes a goose. We informed about the increased prices, but also about the situation in Czech farms.
On Thursday, we published the material in which we spoke with the operator of a restaurant in the Central Bohemia region. He admitted to us that there will be no St. Martin’s goose this year.
The reasons are simple. Price.
Last year, the restaurant served foie gras pate as an appetizer for 89 crowns, goose broth caldoun cost ten crowns less, and strudel was served as dessert for 69 crowns. Duck leg with dumpling and cabbage cost 399 crowns. The discounted menu cost five hundred.
“When the owner told me that her geese weighed over five kilos and that she would not sell me one for less than two thousand kroner, the decision was made. There simply won’t be a goose this year,” explained the innkeeper.
After calculating the costs, he found out that he would have to serve one portion for 500 crowns or more. “I can’t imagine that a family would come and leave me two thousand just for food. Maybe in Prague, but definitely not here,” he adds.
The alternative is to buy a cheaper goose, but he refuses. “I want to have good quality meat. I know that I can buy a goose from Poland or Hungary in Makro, but I don’t want that,” he added.
The businessman talked about the fact that paying such money for food is acceptable, especially in Prague. We saw this for ourselves when we saw the offer of a whole range of restaurants.
The dining room shocked with the price for the goose
We were even more surprised when we saw with our own eyes the St. Martin’s offer of the Těšnov People’s Canteen. We have already reported on this extremely popular dining room in the past.
There are long lines here every day. People in suits and overalls. The prices here are incredibly favorable, for food and drink, you will still get back two hundred crowns here.
A lot of people wrote to us after the mentioned report that the huge interest in this business is not because of the prices and the fact that they would save money, but that the quality of the food is really high. And we can confirm that. Since then, we have visited the People’s Dining Room several times and the food has always been great.
We wrote
REPORT: People’s canteen Těšnov is one of the best-known and most popular establishments in this catering segment in Prague. To prove this statement…
During our last visit, we were interested in the already mentioned offer of St. Martin’s feasts. The canteen is not open on the weekend, so it was a personal pick-up on Friday during the day.
We have not seen such low prices elsewhere in Prague.
500 milliliters of goose caldoun with bread dumplings cost 65 crowns. A four-hundred-gram slow-roasted goose leg was for 229. All of this was still available twenty-four hours before the closing of orders, the dining room confirmed to us.
It was different in the case of the whole goose, which weighed four kilograms including the bone. It was already sold out. The price was more than acceptable: 780 crowns.
Offer. Source: PrahaIN.cz
In addition, the Těšnov People’s Canteen offered 150 grams of red cabbage for four crowns, and one piece of potato and bun dumpling cost the same. Spekovy was eight crowns more expensive.
Low prices are hard to believe these days. So we decided to contact the cafeteria.
On the umpteenth attempt, we managed to get in touch with Radek Hejma, who runs the Těšnov People’s Canteen. He apologized that he was not in time at all and that he was busy. “We’re roasting geese, I’ve got a lot to do, sorry,” he said.
But he briefly described the reasons for the low price. “I’ll tell you briefly. They’re all thieves,” he laughed. “Exactly 500 kroner for a goose is a massacre. But now I have a lot to do, I’m making kaldoun at the moment.”
