Hot Time In The Meat Locker

That's Sir Paul, with a few oysters.

Last year, for my 50th birthday, I took over Sansho, the hip, happening hotspot on Prague's restaurant scene. I invited as many friends as I could fit in there, and chef Paul Day prepared a special menu for everyone.

To say it was a memorable night is to belabor understatement. The food, the friends, the atmosphere. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday. And Paul, whom I now call my friend, made it all happen. Sansho was still relatively new on the Prague restaurant scene then (although it had already generated quite a buzz), and so many of my friends hadn't yet sampled Paul's food.

I loved the idea that I was helping them discover what all of Prague (and beyond) would soon be hearing about.

Paul and Sansho have gone on to even greater glory since then, of course. In May, the restaurant was awarded a Bib Gourmand, one step shy of a Michelin star. And Paul has opened his own butcher shop in Prague's New Town, The Real Meat Society, which I wrote about a few weeks ago.

So, I thought it'd be appropriate to celebrate my 51st birthday at Sansho. A bit more low-key, perhaps, with just a couple of friends, but still a chance to savor those amazing flavors. I hadn't been there in too long.

Paul had another idea.

Why not have a "crudo"night in the butcher shop? he suggested. (Crudo being Italian for "raw," btw.) Some beef tartare, oysters, and a few other surprises. The space was small, which meant only a few people and no kids (quite a departure from last year), but I didn't argue.

The main course. One of them, anyway.

So in late April, one night after the shop had closed, Paul and a few members of his staff set up a cozy table next to the graffiti-covered meat coolers in the back and Daisy and a few our friends -- Margot Buff, Karen LaMonte and Steve Polaner, to be precise -- got down to the business of some serious eating, drinking, and socializing.

We enjoyed salmon sashimi with citrus soy; pork belly and crispy oyster sandwiches; beef tatare with bottarga and yuzu sweet fried bread; Bloody Mary oyster shooters; raw oysters on the half-shell; raw oysters with ponzu; crispy oysters topped with kanafeh and wasabi cream; Angus short-rib penang and roti; and cheesecake with dulce de leche.

We brought our own wine, including some lovely Italian bottles from the Alto Adige region, courtesy of Steve and Karen.

An amazing night. I'm a lucky man.

Thanks so much to Paul and his partner, Míša, and to Daisy, Margot, Steve, and Karen.

Now, Paul, about next year ...

 Beef tatare with bottarga and Bloody Mary oyster shooters

Steve Polaner. Always cutting-edge.

Tools of the trade.

The salmon sashimi with citrus soy.

Oysters on the half-shell; raw oysters with ponzu; and crispy oysters topped with kanafeh and wasabi cream.

That's Steve Polaner (top), Karen LaMonte, Steve, Margot Buff, and Daisy.

A bit of Angus short rib

Night hawks.

Karen is wondering how she's going to tell Steve she's eaten the last oyster.

Things got a little crazy.

You really think we're doing this again next year?!

Photo by Steve Polaner

Photo by Steve Polaner

Photo by Steve Polaner

The Cat's Meow

I wanted to share this truly amazing present I received for my 51st birthday.

Daisy painted a birthday card for me that honored all the cats that have come through our lives in the past few years, mostly when we were living in the village of Černý Vůl, west of Prague. (We just moved back to Prague 6 in December.)

You can read about some of these cats and our efforts to rescue them in some of my previous blog posts, such as "Farewell, Little Friend," "Pussy Galore," "A Home Sweet Home For Chaz," "Looking For A Home For Pee-Wee," "The Funny Things Is, I'm Really A Dog Person," "Remembering Zhenya," and "The Cerny Vul Cat House."

The 12 little faces that Daisy painted perfectly capture both the physical characteristics of the cats, as well as their personalities.

Chicho's manic guilelessness. Zhenya's caramel sweetness. Oscar's trusting innocence. Moussa Koussa's fierce independence. Flakey's adventurousness (and one weepy eye).

The card was inspired by a handmade quilt made for Emma by Daisy's mother, Robin, out of handkerchiefs that belonged to her mother and Daisy's grandmother, Christine Crouch. The quilt hangs in our flat. You can see it below.

"Christine -- or Grandmother Crouch, as I always called her -- lived in a large house in Dutchess County, New York, and probably had a hundred or so cats over her lifetime," Daisy says. "I remember hearing stories of there being up to 25 cats living in and around the house at a time, although by the time I came around there were probably fewer.

"The quilt depicts some of her most notable cats. The names reflect her weakness for Russian literature (Nikolay), Soviet space achievements (Sputnik), American jazz singers (Blossom Dearie), and whimsy (Twinkletoes!)."

What amazes me is that the quilt is, well, quilt-sized. Daisy's card is only 17 centimeters by 22 centimeters.

I'm astounded by Daisy's talents. Definitely taking this one to the framers.

Thank you, honey.

Beautiful Weeds, Indeeds

In Divoká Šárka, Prague, May 1, 2012.

That's All Yolks

The Pleasures Of The Flesh

I had the good fortune to be invited to a party to mark the opening of The Real Meat Society (a.k.a. Day's Custom Meats), the new butcher shop run by my friend, chef Paul Day, he of restaurant Sansho fame. (So new they were still painting the sign out front when I arrived. See below.)

Paul was a butcher long before he was a chef, and he hasn't lost his love for the pleasures of the flesh. Indeed, he describes himself on his Twitter feed as a "chef, butcher, and urban meat roasting specialist."

Paul is trying to re-introduce the long-lost art of butchery to the Czech Republic. As Todd Benson recently wrote on the Prague TV website:

Paul's concept [is] simple: use local produce and help educate farmers on the raising and slaughtering of these animals...reintroduce Czech breeds of sheep and pigs that had vanished at the end of the First Republic, and move to a more localized way of production. (The farms would have their own abattoir to cut down on the stress of transportation, for instance.)

Paul's cool little shop at Náplavní 5 (boasting what have to be the city's only graffiti-covered meat lockers), not far from the Dancing Building in New Town, is small, but it offers an impressive selection -- from beautiful pork roasts and bacon and hamburger to homemade New York-style meatballs and duck and Mexican- and Hawaiian-style sausages. There's also farm-fresh eggs and homemade butter and fresh garlic and pickled mushrooms in jars that look like grandma canned them in the cellar.

Oh, and let us not forget the 9-week dry-aged beef.

I must admit to never having tasted a dry-aged steak, at least as far as I can remember. I had to do a little research to refresh my memory about what the term "dry-aged" actually means.

Basically, slabs of beef are hung for weeks in a carefully controlled refrigerator to "ripen," for want of a better word. Dry-aging is a tricky, expensive, but ultimately rewarding process that intensifies the meat's flavors while also acting as a tenderizer.

It's such a laborious and costly process that it's rare to find a restaurant or butchers even offering dry-aged steaks for sale.

Sadly, I was off to a squash game after Paul's party and couldn't buy anything to take home. Rest assured, I will be going back for a few dry-aged steaks and I'll report my findings here.

All the best to Paul in his new venture. You can find the shop's website, including opening hours, by clicking here.

Font-tastic

I really liked the font of the numbers and the ancient patina on these old post office boxes in my local post office in Prague 6.

It's 6 p.m. In Manhattan

The Which Chair Project

A funky old chair in the lobby at the Prague Film & Theater Center.

Out Of Gin

My Time In 'Eden'

I was thrilled to be asked by Lindsay Taylor at the Prague Film & Theater Center to participate in a staged reading of "The Eden Game," a play about Vaclav Havel by California-based playwright Jock Doubleday.

Doubleday wrote the first act of "The Eden Game" in 1989, inspired after reading Havel's "Letters to Olga." The second act was written in 1997, after learning of Havel's second marriage to actress Dagmar Veškrnová. As Doubleday said in the playbill:

"Unfortunately, no one had any interest in a play about Vaclav Havel. Perhaps his real-life drama was enough. Today's staged reading, 22 years after the play's inception, is a great gift to me. I have written 39 plays, but "The Eden Game" was my first, and it holds a special place in my heart."

The staged reading is a chance for the playwright to see and hear his words come to life for the first time on a stage and to get constructive feedback from the audience and the performers. The performance was filmed and the audience was asked to fill out feedback cards. Sadly, Doubleday couldn't be in Prague for the reading.

I was asked to read the part of the Prison Warden in Act I. I had a fantastic time meeting and working with the other actors. It was the first time I had been on a stage in front of a live audience since 1990 or so, when I was a stand-up comic for a night for a Plimpton-esque first-person newspaper story. (That's another story.)

(Read a review of our performance here.)

The actors sat on stage in a horseshoe around an old bench, where most of the "action" took place. When it was our turn, we entered the acting space to engage with the other performers (mostly with Scott Williams, who played Havel). We were all reading from the script; we hadn't had time to memorize our lines. And while we weren't in costume, we did act the parts as best we could given the limited parameters.

What did I think?

There is much to recommend in "The Eden Game." The dialogue is smart and chewy, and the subject matter is right for the stage. It's an ambitious play, and Doubleday obviously knows his history. But I think it is too long, its structure overly complicated and a tad gimmicky (a play within a play) which, in my opinion, detracts from the power of Havel's story, which needs no embellishment.

I hope our performance helps Doubleday hone "The Eden Game" and that it gets produced somewhere.

Who knows? Maybe even Prague.

The Things We Carry

The things we carry with us through life. The things we just can't bear to throw away or give away.

I've got a few.

We just moved, which forced me to confront all the things I've carried.

Like my NFL Action '72 stamp album. My dad used to bring the stamps home from the Sunoco gas station. I guess you'd get a package of nine with every fill-up.

I managed to fill the entire album, except for one stamp. Terry Hanratty, the backup quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers. That was a thankless job, playing behind Terry Bradshaw. Maybe they didn't even print a stamp for him.

The Steelers were my team (we were living in New Alexandria, Pennsylvania, at the time, not that far from Pittsburgh). Funny that the Steelers were the one team whose roster I somehow couldn't complete.

I see today that there's someone on eBay selling an NFL Action '72 album for $100. Funnily enough, it's also missing one stamp.

I've also lovingly carried with me all these years a mint sheet of the 50 state flag stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service in 1976 to mark the bicentennial. I used to be a stamp collector when I was a kid. Sadly, after all this time, a similar sheet is selling for only $10 on eBay. Ten dollars after 36 years!

I guess I'll just hang onto them for a little while longer.

Train Station Stuck In Time

Two images taken at the train station in Kralupy nad Vltavou, about 30 kilometers north of Prague. Looks like it was built in 1963 and has been preserved in amber ever since.

My Acting Demo Reel

Grant Podelco (Demo Reel) from Grant Podelco on Vimeo.

"I don't know what acting is, but I enjoy it." -- Anthony Hopkins

Here's a demo reel of some of my acting efforts so far, mostly appearing in films written and directed by the talented students at the Prague Film School. (I wrote about my fledgling acting efforts in a previous post here.)

On May 3, I'll be appearing in a small speaking role in episode of ABC's "Missing," starring Ashley Judd, Sean Bean, and Keith Carradine, which was filmed in Prague last autumn. I'm pretty excited about that. I'll add that clip to this show reel after it airs.

I've been going to a few auditions and took an intensive acting class from Nancy Bishop a few weeks ago. I was pretty nervous about committing to it, but figured that if I was nervous, it's something I should probably do. And I'm so glad I did. I met some wonderful actors from Prague, Berlin, and Vienna, and really challenged myself. Nancy's a great teacher. She really knows the biz. Heck, she wrote the book on it.

Because of that acting class, I was asked by the Prague Film & Theater Center to read the part of the Warden in a staged reading on March 23 of "The Eden Game," a new play based on the life of Vaclav Havel by Jock Doubleday.

Come out and see us. It starts at 6 p.m. at Male Vinohradske Divadlo. Tickets cost 150 CZK for adults and 100 CZK for students. You can e-mail info@pftc.cz for more information.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the demo reel. Make sure the kids are out of the room first before you hit Play.

Long Weekend In Berlin