If You're Full, The Food Is Good

This was an old Czech saying, according to our waiter from The Hotel Grand Cafe located in Cesky Krumlov, a World Heritage site in the Czech Republic. It was embarrassing to hear, because it  reminded me of how very little deprivation the American public has suffered in recent history. We expect food to be much more than filling in order to be good, although that doesn't seem to stop us from over eating at fast food restaurants.

 


Our meal was filling alright, in fact, a cardinal rule was broken by not cleaning the plate. Because of being just too full to eat another bite, I placed one of the more than generous dumpling slices onto my husband's plate, so my plate would look as though at least an effort had been made to finish the meal. That is a technique that is generally successful, but not this time.
 



Since we had started with the chicken soup, loaded with what looked like the same bread that had been the primary ingredient within the dumplings, we seemed doomed from the start.

Judging by his selection of roast pork with cabbage, flanked by not one form, but two kinds of dumplings, bread and potato, my husband was already in the weeds when it came to being full. He was overcome by the sheer volume and weight of his own meal, so the "gifted" dumpling languished on his plate.
 

 


















He jokingly remarked that the Budvar was causing the dumplings in his stomach to expand at a rapid pace. 

 





Although I could not identify the cut of the venison, it may have been from the shoulder, the cream sauce and red currants added a nice note to the flavor. 

As we scanned other restaurant menus the following day, we couldn't help but notice that the menus with photographs were showing plates with at least 4 or 5 slices of dumplings swimming in cream sauces. We had learned our lesson and dined at a restaurant that didn't even list dumplings.