Disclaimer: the following rather negative review is only based on a single visit with a single main course and 2 sides. Maybe my next visit will wow me.
Sometimes when I hear about a new restaurant in Prague, I’m biased in the sense that I really want that particular restaurant to be amazing, and this has been the case with Isaac’s BBQ on Jungmannova, which I first heard about when Czech Please shared a post from an English food blogger who was very enthusiastic. With the loss of Bad Jeff’s BBQ still like a bleeding wound, I was hoping for an alternative that would make me just as happy.
I visited the place yesterday. They are still in ‘soft opening’, as evidenced by a sign on the front door, which is a nice honesty.
I was greeted by a nice waitress and overall the service was really welcoming and friendly. I had a choice of a 4-person table or a chair at the bar and chose the former. I’m not usually so keen on sitting at the bar.
I ordered a beer, a Raven Lager for Czk. 79,-, so I wouldn’t be thirsty while reading the menu. The other beers on tap were ales, quite expensive and too ‘hipsterish’ for my taste, but that’s a personal preference. There are also various bottled beers to choose from, but Coors Light or American Budweiser seems like a joke here in the Czech Republic.
My Raven Lager had a lovely hop bitterness and I really liked it.
The menu is nice and clear. It’s mainly based on ordering food to be shared at the table family style, but that doesn’t exclude ordering solo.
I skipped the starters and from the meat and sides section I chose the Pork Spare Ribs (1/4 rack) with 2 sides, namely Mac & Cheese and Apple Coleslaw, classics that used to be available at Bad Jeff’s.
Although there weren’t many people in the restaurant, it was close to half an hour before the food arrived, but it gave me the opportunity to squeeze down another Raven Lager.
My first impression was that the food was not presented in an inviting and appetising way. The Mac & Cheese looked almost burnt after heating in the oven, and the meat, which was pitch black, rested on a sauce that looked like someone threw up on the tray it was served on.
Let’s start with the positives: my Pork Spare Ribs were tender and meaty, and the smoky flavour was delicious. The fat was rendered so you weren’t left with a greasy feeling in your mouth, and even though it was only ¼ rack, the portion size was reasonable. Delicious meat!
It rested on top of a sweet and sour sauce that tasted of apple and went well with the meat. There were two other sauces on the side, and again the sweet and sour flavour dominated, which was the theme of all 3 sauces and therefore became strangely overwhelming. A lot of vinegar was used in that kitchen! One sauce was beige/brown and my favourite with a lovely mustardy undertone that suited the meat well. The other was red and had a strange, almost synthetic and ‘exotic-Asian’ flavour that reminded me of a failed Chinese take-away or an unfinished Indian sauce that had given up after adding ginger and cumin, which were the flavours that came to mind. Maybe someone will love the sauce, I found it strange, weird and not at all delicious. There were pickled cucumbers, pickled red onions and pickled red chillies on the side and the pickles were my winners when it came to the accompaniments, although they also contributed to the vinegar fest.
My Mac & Cheese wasn’t that bad, but definitely not a side dish I would recommend or order again. The pasta seemed like a cheap option and was very overcooked. The sauce was a bit bland and the cheese flavour reminded me of the cheapest processed cheese you could buy in my childhood in Denmark, which we mostly used as a spread on bread if we snuck to the bakery during recess. The flavour was like over-processed cheese from the cheapest aisle, but it probably wasn’t, and maybe I just don’t appreciate good Mac & Cheese when I meet it.
My coleslaw wasn’t bad either, but it was generic and forgettable. If I was given the recipe, I would have no desire to recreate it at home and serve it to guests. In fact, this was the case with every element of the serving except the meat, which I would give 4 out of 5 points, maybe even 4½ points if it had looked more inviting when served.
But all other elements dragged it down, and if I had to give an overall score, I might give it 3 out of 5: the meat above average, everything else below.
Nothing was bad, nothing would make me send the food out and complain about it.
But nothing that would make me get excited and immediately plan to return.
Well, I’ll probably do that anyway, I will return. I’ll wait a month or so to get them fully up to speed. And I’ll choose something else. Because I really wanted to get excited and love Isaac’s BBQ. And I still really want to!
Isaac’s BBQ
Jungmannova 736/10
100 00, Prague 1
Tue-Sat: 17-23