How do you say soy in Czech?

Anthony Bourdain declared Prague the land of pork when he visited the Czech Republic capital for his godsend of a TV show, No Reservations. While he may have a point, I found Prague to be fairly vegan friendly upon closer examination. At first glance, the streets of Prague are filled with all things pig; the grocery aisles all things dairy; the locals all things...chinchilla. Although the Edinburgh Tesco offers about 6 variations of non-dairy milk, I could not for the life of me find soy milk in the Prague Tesco. This might have been a language barrier though and for the record I now know that soy in Czech is sója but soy milk is sójové mléko. I'm still not convinced this information would have helped me though. As I was put up by Logan, the meat eater, I tried not to push the boundaries of my warm welcome and indulged in such vegetarian (but not vegan) delights as the local dumpling bread and smazeny, pronounced "shmaz". For as little as 25 crowns, smazeny is probably one of the best street vendor foods to soak up the alcohol in your stomach at 3 am. From what I could discern it consists of breaded, melted cheese with onions and condiments in between a hamburger bun. The bites I stole from Logan were totally worth the breach from veganism and I felt pretty cultured compared to the large group of wasted Americans next to me repeatedly yelling out for a cheeseburger.

As I explored the city, I began to see signs of a vegetarian-conscious underground often expressed through graffiti.

A chance encounter with an ad for a vegetarian restaurant prompted me to google the vegan food scene, despite the meat fuelled cries of Tony Bourdain, Logan, and local street vendors. Logan generously agreed to check out the vegetarian restaurant Maitrea on Valentine's Day. Maitrea is a sister restaurant to Clear Head (as seen in the advertisement) and offers an eclectic menu of veg and vegan delights sure to satisfy even the most pork addicted palate. I chose a pasta with soy-based imitation cream sauce, smoked tofu, and spinach. Although I usually avoid soy I recognize that I should be grateful for any type of a gourmet vegan meal in a formerly communist country where you ate what you got end of story. While the cream sauce was a bit too rich for my liking the smoked tofu was nothing short of inspired. Logan and I had to take home our rice pudding desert because we were too full but I highly recommend it to anyone who goes to Prague, vegan or not. The back of the menu also included a very helpful index of vegetarian terms like "tofu", "seitan" etc to clarify any questions for first timers. The staff was also very helpful and the general ambiance of the restaurant, filled with sanskrit writings and tea lights, made for a very relaxing experience. At around 450 crowns the meal was expensive for Czech standards but do the math and you'll realize 2 people stuffed themselves on Valentine's evening to the tune of about 25 dollars. Not bad.(Děkuji, Logan!)



PS If anyone can explain why a lot of the writing is in blue and how to make it not in blue I will be forever in your debt.