European cheeses: holiday entertaining with the taste of travel

by Laurel Miller on

I work part-time in a cheese shop, and I’m also a contributing editor at culture, a consumer cheese magazine. I can’t help noticing that, despite a still-sluggish economy, people don’t want to do without their cheese. Especially if they’ve fallen for a specific type during their (usually European) travels.

Not everyone who bellies up to the counter is a globetrotter or a cheese geek, but they’re all eager to try new things and learn about the animals and cheesemakers responsible, and what, if any, cultural role certain cheeses play in their country of origin. It got me thinking: why not show Gadling readers how to do a bit of armchair travel to Europe via their local cheese shop?

Cheese has long been associated with revelry, in part because of its cozy compatibility with beer, wine, Champagne, and certain spirits. With the holiday season upon us, I put together a list of some delicious, versatile, affordable European imports that will make any small party more festive. The best part? You don’t need to be any kind of cheese wunderkind to put together a banging cheese plate (suggestions coming up).

[Photo credit: Flickr user cwbuecheler]

I usually allow about an ounce of each cheese per person, assuming there’s more food. If you’re throwing a big party, it may not be financially feasible to purchase certain products (and there’s nothing wrong with serving a mass-produced Gruyere or Gouda). Note that some styles of cheese are less dense than others, so depending upon price, you can get more dairy for your dollar.

If you can’t find these cheeses at your nearest grocery, Whole Foods (which have generally excellent cheese departments), or specialty shop, try online sources Murray’s Cheese, Cowgirl Creamery, Formaggio Kitchen, and Artisanal Premium Cheese. Click here for a national cheese retailer directory by zipcode.

In addition to picking some of my own favorites, I turned to one of culture’s co-founders, cheesemonger Thalassa Skinner of Napa’s Oxbow Cheese Merchant, for advice:

The Cheeses

France
Langres (cow): Traditionally served with Champagne poured over it (those decadent French!), this well-priced washed-rind is a little bit stinky, with a dense, creamy interior and tangy lactic finish. From the Langres plateau in the Champagne-Ardenne region.

Holland
Ewephoria (sheep): Nutty, rich, with a hint of crystallization, this butterscotchy Gouda will convert even the ambivalent into cheese aficionados.

Switzerland
Appenberger (cow): This buttery Alpine-style cheese from the Schweitzer Mittelland region has a faintly grassy tang. A surefire crowd-pleaser.

Italy
Robiola due latte (a blend of cow and sheep or goat’s milk): A rich, mold-ripened number with a slightly sour, mushroomy finish, from the dairy-rich Piedmont and Lombardy regions. Top imports include those by Perolari due Latti, Robiola Bosina, and Robiola delle Langhe.

Spain
Leonora (goat): A loaf-shaped, mold-ripened cheese from the northwestern village of León. Creamy, tangy, and delightful, with a blindingly white, dense, chewy interior.

Portugal
Azeitao (cow): Yeasty, full-flavored, with a slightly bitter finish; a beer-lover’s cheese. From the village of the same name, in the Arrabida Mountains, near Lisbon.

England
Stilton (cow): Colston-Bassett makes perhaps the finest version of this historic, earthy blue cheese. It’s a classic British holiday treat, produced in Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire. Stichelton is the equally delicious, raw milk version; it’s a bit more fruity and crumbly. But for another British tradition, go for a robust Cheddar. Keen’s (cow) is buttery, with a horseradishy bite.

Ireland
Coolea (cow): This dense, buttery, Gouda-style from County Cork has a sharp, grassy finish. Unusual and delicious.

Belgium
Wavreumont (cow): A smooth, full-flavored, monastic-style washed rind. Trappist beer, anyone?

Cheese Plate 101

K.I.S.S.: This is a fun little acronym I learned in culinary school. It stands for, “Keep it Simple, Stupid.” A foofy, cluttered cheese plate with too many accompaniments just detracts from the headliner. You can keep sides as simple as some plain crackers or a baguette, or add toasted almonds, walnuts, or hazelnuts, and some preserves, or honeycomb or dried fruit or grapes or slices of pear or apple (in summer, use stonefruit such as peaches or cherries, or berries).

You can also go the savory route with dry-cured or green olives (Picholine are my favorite) and some salumi (add grainy mustard, cornichons, and a hearty rye bread for a winter supper). Forget the sundried tomatoes, pickled onions, pepperoncini, artichoke hearts, tapenade, stuffed peppers, or whatever else the local deli has in its antipasti bar. It’s overkill.

Stick to three to four cheeses that increase in intensity of flavor. You can do whatever you want: all blues, or all goat cheeses. For a diverse, well-rounded plate, try: One creamy/mild; one semi-soft or semi-firm with some kick, or a washed-rind/ surface-ripened; one hard-aged; one blue or something really punchy (taste this last, because the stronger flavors will obscure your palate). Your cheesemonger can help you pick things out and explain these terms to you, or click here for a glossary.

When pairing cheese with beer or wine, a rule of thumb is to match the intensity of flavor of the cheese to that of the beverage. The following are some suggestions for some of the more tricky, assertive cheeses.

Goat cheese: A good rosé will almost always work, as will a light German beer like Hoegaarden.

Big, stinky washed-rinds: Pair with sweet bubbly; the effervescence will help cleanse the palate and won’t compete with the flavor of the cheese. If you’re drinking beer, go with a light pilsner or lambic.

Blue cheeses: Go for a sweet dessert wine (not Port) or Lambic beer with fruit, such as framboise.

For additional cheese plate ideas, click here.

[Photo credits: Neal’s Yard, Flickr user foodmuse; Gouda, Flickr user manuel/MC; cow, Laurel Miller; grapes, Flickr user lakewentworth; goat, Laurel Miller]

Grantourismo blogger on guidebooks and travel writing

by Meg Nesterov on

Last week I posted a Q & A with blogger Lara Dunston and her husband and partner Terence Carter about their travel project and blog Grantourismo. In addition to good advice about renting a vacation apartment and getting “under the skin” of a place when traveling, they had a lot of interesting things to say about guidebooks, both from their experiences writing them and how they see travelers using them wrong.

Read on for more on the guidebook writing process, how you can use them best on vacation, the changing media landscape, and which bloggers and publications offer the best content for travelers.How did this project stem from your experiences as travel writers?
Grantourismo began as a personal travel project that developed from our frustrations, firstly, with our own work as travel writers, and secondly, with how many travelers rely so much on guidebooks. Terence and I wrote, updated or contributed to around 50 guidebooks for Lonely Planet, Footprints, Rough Guides, DK, and others, and what we loved most about guidebook writing was when we worked on a city guide and rented an apartment for a month or two and really got beneath the skin of the place.

So many writers who aren’t residents of a place ‘parachute in’ to a destination for a few weeks and do crazy 18-hour days ticking off sights/bars/restaurants etc in a frenzy and leave. We didn’t start travel writing to live like that. However, what we disliked was the tedious stuff – ensuring the post office was in the right spot on the map, checking bus timetables, etc. We’d also been doing lots of feature writing, especially profiles, for magazines and newspapers, and what we loved about that was experiencing places through their people.

What’s the difference between guidebook and feature writing?

With guidebooks, unless Terence had a photography commission for the same book we were writing, we mostly traveled anonymously. As feature writers we could contact people, doors would open, and we’d have incredible experiences, and come away feeling like we’d really learnt something. For instance, for a story on Michelin-star chef Pierre Gagnaire’s Dubai restaurant, we spent a night in the kitchen, Terence cooking and me observing and notetaking and – Terence ended up cooking a dish for Pierre! Grantourismo was an attempt to develop a project that would give us the opportunity to have more of those kinds of experiences and have the best of both worlds, of guidebook and feature writing. We also wanted to inspire travelers to travel in the same way, to engage more with locals and explore their own interests when they travel. This desire grew out of a frustration with seeing how obsessed people were with their guidebooks and witnessing travellers miss out on amazing opportunities because they would only go to places their guidebooks recommended.

I’ll never forget going to a great little stand-up seafood tapas place in Barcelona and seeing a young American couple sitting on the doorstop next door frantically trying to figure out if it was in the guidebook. The place was heaving and it was full of locals! Just go in! There’s also another famous tapas bar in Barcelona which once had a great reputation but it fairly mediocre now but because it’s in every guidebook, people line up for it an hour before it opens. Yet there are 20 other better tapas bars in the surrounding streets! We’d rather see people leave their guidebooks closed occasionally, talk to locals more and pursue their interests. If you’re passionate about food and cooking, why not go to a place and do a cooking course, stay in a vacation rental and shop at the markets and cook? If you love a restaurant get tips on where to eat from the waiter, and if the restaurant is quiet, why not ask to see the kitchen and chat to the chef?

So can travelers still rely on guidebooks for basic info?
Guidebooks are great for background information on a wide variety of topics on a place. What’s the alternative? Lugging around half a dozen books on the history, politics, geography, culture etc of the destination? Or load those books onto a Kindle or iPad, although of course not all travelers can afford hi-tech gadgets or even want to take them to some destinations. The ‘front/back matter’ in guidebooks can usually be relied upon – sometimes the stuff is written by subject experts, or it’s written by authors who do a great deal of research, it’s fact-checked, and it doesn’t date quickly.

Where guidebooks can be unreliable on the other hand is in the perishable information – reviews of hotels, restaurants, shops, cafés, bars, their addresses, phone numbers, prices, opening times etc. It’s not necessarily the author’s fault. Businesses move or close down, things change. It’s the fault of the publisher and their long production schedules – sometimes a year or 18 months can pass from the time the author has done the research to the time the books hit the shops. Some places never change or change little, like small country towns, but cities like Shanghai or Dubai change constantly.

We once worked on a first edition guidebook that took two years from the time I submitted the manuscript and Terence submitted the photos to reaching the bookshops. I wrote the first edition of one guidebook and updated the second edition, but I know that book has since been reprinted twice without further updates. How can travelers rely on those books? In some cases, I think the publishers have a lot to answer for, particularly when new museums or significant sights would make a ‘Top 10’ list but haven’t been added.

Any guidebook series you do like for local recommendations?
We like niche guidebooks, such as Hedonist’s Guides, which uses authors that really know their stuff when it comes to restaurants, bars, and hotels.Hedonists also come in a cool hardcover book as well, so they don’t fall apart, and as iPhone apps that are updated much more frequently than the book.

This year, on our Grantourismo trip, we’ve been on a mission to find locally produced guidebooks in each place we’ve visited, and when we’ve tested out a book and loved it we’ve interviewed the publishers/editors and showcased the book on our site, such as the arty and rather philosophical ‘My Local Guide to Venice‘ and the straight-talking ‘Not for Tourists‘
in New York. We want to encourage travelers to look for these books because they bring a uniquely local flavor and multiple perspectives on their destinations, unlike the big mainstream global guidebook publishers where the authors’ personalities are never allowed to shine.


What can user-generated content like TripAdvisor offer travelers compared to traditional media?
I think user-generated content supplements books and travel features in newspapers/magazines but can never replace quality guidebook authorship or travel journalism. While user-generated content wins out in terms of currency (the reviews have dates), guidebook authors and travel journalists are professionals with expertise. It’s our job to assess hotels, restaurants, bars, sights, and so on. Having slept in thousands of hotels across all budget categories, eaten tens of thousands of meals at all kinds of restaurants, visited thousands of museums, etc, gives you a degree of experience and expertise that the average traveler who has 2 weeks (in the USA) or at most 4-8 weeks (in the UK/Australia/Europe) holiday can never hope to match. If a guidebook author tells me the XXX hotel is the best in Milan and a reviewer on Trip Advisor tells me the YYY hotel is the best, I know whose opinion I’m going to trust.

If the traveler writing on Trip Advisor focuses on describing in detail their very specific experience of a hotel or restaurant, that kind of information can be helpful when weighed up against other reviews by travelers and experts. Where it can be detrimental is when the Trip Advisor reviewer starts making claims about a certain hotel being the best in the city or the cheapest or friendliest or whatever. What I want to know is how many hotels have they stayed at or inspected to be able to compare their hotel to? A guidebook writer specializing on a destination might have stayed at a dozen hotels in that city over a number of years, and inspected 50 others. So when it comes to user-generated content, my main issue is with the authority of authorship. There are also plenty of games being played out behind the scenes with
manipulation of reviews (both positive and negative) of properties. In a recent destination we visited a local foodie who told us to simply ignore the top 10 places listed on Trip Advisor as they’re rubbish. And she was right. We’ve personally seen scathing reviews of hotels and restaurants that we know are some of our favourites in the world – so who are you going to trust? The user ‘britney_1537’ or a professional travel writer?

Where do you see travel journalism going?
I can’t see travel journalism in magazines or newspapers changing significantly because it hasn’t changed in its genre, form or structure a great deal at all. What has changed is that there are far more journalists working for broadsheets and travel magazine these days that are doing trips ‘courtesy of’ a tourism body or travel operator – and it’s apparent from the first paragraph, even if it’s not declared. There has definitely been a trend toward publications redefining and narrowing their focus and we’ve seen wonderful new niche travel publications born in the last year or so such as Wend and AFAR – a magazine after our own hearts and minds!

I can see traditional travel publications embracing more user-generated content in the way that some of the UK newspapers have been doing by incorporating reader’s travel writing and tips and linking to those on their main travel pages. I love how The Guardian in the UK engages its readers on Twitter and I dig the Twi-Trips that Benji Lanyado does, which are kind of mini-versions of that fantastic journey the Twitchhiker did that had us all engrossed in his journey halfway round the world relying totally on the hospitality of strangers.

I also think we’ll start to see more travel writers like Terence and I who have worked across traditional media platforms entering into direct relationships with companies as we have with HomeAway Holiday-Rentals and producing content on their own websites and blogs or on the company’s blog, as say, David Whitley has done for Round the World Flights in the UK. But it will only work if the writer can negotiate editorial control as we did with HomeAway Holiday-Rentals. As long as writers maintain their integrity and apply the same ethics they would to a story for a newspaper or magazine, it’s a good thing. But how many travel companies are willing to give writers this freedom? If you look at our last few posts on Cape Town and our first posts on Kenya – which are both reflective and critical – you have to ask yourself how many travel-related companies are willing to let writers produce this kind of content that doesn’t gloss over the situation on the ground?

How can travelers benefit from the changing media landscape?
Travellers can benefit by content that is more creative and less restricted by a publications editorial style or writing guidelines, by content that is more freewheeling in spirit. A perfect example is Pam Mandel who blogs at Nerd’s Eye View, who has a unique, intimate, chatty style of writing that wouldn’t work for a lot of newspapers for instance – but she’s heading off to Antarctica soon on a sponsored trip and I can’t wait to see how she brings her own singular brand of writing to that adventure. What’s important with these gigs, like Grantourismo, is that travel writers continue to be upfront, honest, critical and opinionated in their writing. They need to maintain their integrity and ethics. Travelers in turn need to expect that of the writers they’re reading – if they’re seeing ‘sponsored story’ or company widgets/logos on their blogs (both travel writers and bloggers), they need to look for an editorial policy. It’s only by writing critically that writers will win readers’ trust in the long term and projects like Grantourismo will succeed.

Check out more on Grantourismo on their blog and Twitter page.

All photos courtesy of Terence Carter.

Local budget travel secrets

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Most countries and territories have their own local domestic budget secrets that don’t get a lot of press beyond their borders. To call these local travel habits secrets is to miss the point just slightly, as they’re actually widely appreciated and utilized, though by locals. In this sense, they’re the opposite of secrets, even as they remain more or less unknown to foreigners.

This post is designed to work as a companion piece to yesterday’s post, which detailed ten real budget travel tips for the keenly frugal.

1. Gîtes in France. Every region of France sees this inexpensive accommodation option in great numbers. Gîtes tend to be fully furnished apartments or houses, usually in rural locations. Owners live on site or nearby and charge typically very little for stays, which often have be made for a minimum of seven nights. Peruse the Gîtes de France web site and you’ll find many listings for incredibly low rates, like a week in the Ardèche for two for €75 ($98) found during research yesterday. Here’s some simple division: $98 per week for two equals $7 per person per day.

2. Ride share in Germany. Check out Mitfahrgelegenheit.de for ride share information. Many Germans get around the country via this inexpensive and convenient form of transportation, which sees riders connecting with drivers who have open seats that they want to fill. How inexpensive are ride shares? Next-day fares for rides between Leipzig and Berlin start at €5 ($6.50). See this great English-language description of the German ride share set-up. The German-language site is broken down into domestic, Europe-wide, and commuter ride share spheres. Tip: Use the UK drop down to get your information in English and then set your search to relevant locations.

3. Rural tourism in Slovenia. Slovenia’s tourist farms offer very cheap nightly accommodation. Often meals are included in the nightly rate. This official listing includes 260 tourist tourist farms across the diminutive Alpine country. Slovenia’s tourist farms can be compared to neighbor Italy’s better-known agriturismo network, though rates in Slovenia tend to be far lower. Much of Slovenia is mountainous and offers a much better value than comparable Alpine areas of Austria, Italy, and Switzerland. Kmetija Birsa, one of many tourist farms in Slovenia, offers accommodation starting at €25 ($33) per person per night.

4. Spas in South Korea. I defer to Christine Ka’aloa for her suggestion that visitors to South Korea take advantage of the local gender-segregated tradition of the jjimjilbang, or public bathhouse for a restful and budget-friendly night’s sleep. Most jjimjilbangs are open 24 hours a day, and have sleeping areas. According to Ka’aola, entrance fees start around 6000 won ($5).5. Bungalow parks in the Netherlands. Bungalow parks are typically set in rural areas. Some bungalow parks in the Netherlands are low-tech, consisting simply of a number of cottages, while others are over-the-top, with tons of facilities for children. Take a look at D-Reizen’s bungalow park section for a Dutch-language overview of bungalow park deals. One recent deal turned up during research: €92 ($121) for two people for four nights at a bungalow park in the Dutch province of Limburg. Here’s a tip for dealing with the language barrier: D-Reizen operates around 170 travel agencies throughout the Netherlands. Given the widespread English-language abilities of the Dutch, you can explore bungalow park options with a live salesperson at a travel agency.

6. Camping in the Caribbean. This generally expensive region boasts a surprisingly inexpensive (that is, often free) accommodation option: campgrounds. Puerto Rico leads the region with 17 camping sites. Some of Puerto Rico’s campsites are run by municipalities, while others are situated within territorial and national parks. The US Virgin Islands and British Virgin Islands are also great places to camp, with several sites per territory. In the French overseas territories of Guadeloupe and Martinique it is possible to camp at a number of campsites; always check with the local mayor’s office in these territories to obtain the proper permits. Trinidad and Tobago’s Department of Agriculture operates a number of campsites, and camping is allowed throughout Tobago.

7. Swedish ferries. Sweden’s big ferry companies regularly offer insanely cheap promotional fares for travel around the Baltic, typically to Åland, Helsinki, and Turku in Finland and to Tallinn (Estonia) and Riga (Latvia). These cruises include both same-day and overnight sailings, and are much loved by locals looking to enjoy a cheap getaway. Viking Line is currently listing “last-minute” fares from Stockholm to Åland from 19 kronor ($2.75), to Turku from 21 kronor ($3), and to Helsinki from 90 kronor ($13). Tallink-Silja is currently promoting a 100 kroner ($14) round-trip fare between Stockholm and Riga. If the prospect of trying to decipher Swedish-language websites has you flummoxed, fear not. English is widely spoken among Swedish travel industry workers, and you can stop by local ferry company offices to find out about last-minute deals.

How can you find great local deals on the ground? First of all, remain flexible and receptive to whatever is especially inexpensive at the local level. Scour local newspapers for mention of cheap travel opportunities. In Europe, package holidays and budget flights are both great examples of the sorts of deals, many seasonal, that usually will not be advertised internationally.

Got a local travel “secret” not mentioned here? Right on. Add it in the comments below.

[Image of a gîte in Guadeloupe: Flickr / Toprural]

Daily Pampering: Orient-Express launches “Art of Travel” tours through Europe

by Melanie Nayer on

Luxury train operator Orient Express is taking guests on an art journey through Europe, starting in April 2011.

“The Art of Travel” is a series of art tours to Venice, Paris and within England, in conjunction with London’s renowned National Gallery. Guests will learn about the lives of artists such as Canaletto, Bellini, Titian, Veronese, Monet, Rubens, Turner and Constable, all while seeing the places that inspired their work and notable places that house their work today, accompanied by a National Gallery expert.

All tours include at least one night at London’s Goring Hotel and begin at The National Gallery, where a specialist gives a guided introduction to selected masterpieces before the journeys begin. The tours include:
Venice of Canaletto: This seven-day tour gives travelers the opportunity to view Venice through Canaletto’s eyes. Travel from London aboard the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express through France, the snow-capped Alps and northern Italy. In Venice, guests stay at the Hotel Cipriani and trace the footsteps of Canaletto – the artist forever associated with magnificent Venetian views. Trips start at £4,985 (US$8,000) per person.

Venetian Painters: A six-day tour that introduces great masters from Giovanni Bellini and Titian to Veronese. The morning after a tour and dinner at the National Gallery, guests will fly to Venice where they will step back into the Italian Renaissance and explore great sights such as the Doge’s Palace, the Accademia and Ca’ Rezzonica with an expert from the National Gallery close at hand to add depth to all that is viewed. The price of these trips start at £4,320 (US$6,940) per person.

Impressions of Paris: This series of five-day tours focuses on French Impressionism. Guests will trace Claude Monet’s life and will learn about the drama of the birth of a new movement of art – when painters first began painting out in the open air to capture the effects of light. Prices start at £2,990 (US$4,880) per person.

British Pullman: Combining the thrill of a steam-hauled luxury train, complemented by gourmet dining – brunch on the outbound journey and a three-course supper on the return – and delightful scenery, these exclusive tours include Bath’s finest art collections:

  • Collectors and Collecting: This trip is timed to coincide with the reopening of the Holburne Museum in May 2011 following a major project of restoration and extension. Priced at £1,130 (US$1,815) per person.
  • Thomas Gainsborough: This journey focuses on landscape paintings by notable British and European artists including Rubens, Turner and Constable. Priced at £940 (US$1,510) per person.

Want more? Get your daily dose of pampering right here.

Epochs of Indulgence: How Prague Became a Luxury Destination

by David Farley on

It’s true: Prague really doesn’t let go–to paraphrase Franz Kafka, one of the city’s most famous native sons, who likened the capital of Bohemia to a wicked mother from whose escape (literal, emotional, and mental) was futile. Kafka’s Prague was much different than the gleaming hodgepodge of architecture and cobblestoned streets we see today.

Yet that stranglehold persists.

When, in the 1990s, thousands of artistically inclined American and British and Australian slackers planted themselves in Prague, the Czech capital was transformed into the European capital of indulgence; while pretending to scribble out novels, the expatriates were gripped by Mother Prague, drowning in her nectar of hoppy beer and absinthe and other vices. Many travelers turned up, intending to spend six days and stayed six months. It was a Faustian bargain of sorts: in exchange for a lifestyle of officially sanctioned debauchery at freshly opened cafes, bars, clubs, and galleries, there were gray, yet-to-be renovated facades of buildings, linoleum-clad hotel rooms, uninspired restaurants that trafficked in corrupt, mustached waiters and dishes of indifference like “haunch of pork.”

And from that, a dozen “new Pragues” were launched around the European continent, each one seeming to mimic the cultural and social intemperance of the original. The beginning of the next decade saw another group of indulgence seekers: the stag parties herded themselves into the City of a Hundred Spires, grabbing (with all they could claw) much more than they could ever give back.

But all that’s gone now. The expatriates and the stag parties have cast their googley eyes elsewhere, the gray-clad buildings, and even the indifference have been wiped away by gazillions of Euros of foreign investment. An EU entry, a large spurt in the economy, and a decade later, Prague is no longer the city that anyone remembers.

That’s because travelers are now gravitating to the Czech capital for decadence of a different kind. Oh, the desire for indulgence still remains. It just comes in a different form these days. It started to happen when the names began arriving. First came Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, and Jean Nouvel to put their architectural stamp on the city. Then Hugo Boss, Escada, and Versace. Then the chic five-star hotels began swinging open their doors, first the Four Seasons and then the Mandarin Oriental and The Augustine (a Rocco Forte property) carved themselves out of ancient monasteries in the Mala Strana district. Haunches of pork and smoky, jaundiced-colored pubs have been replaced by clean gastropub-like drinking establishments (such as U Bulovky, Kozlovna, and Budvarka, to name a few) that serve inspired Central European fare in an atmosphere that harkens back to the Interwar period, a time of economic boom and relative stability (kind of like now, not-so-coincidentally enough). Even Michelin has come to town and given its stamp of approval–a first in post-communist Europe, the venerable dining guide awarded its coveted stars to restaurants Allegro and Maze (which recently shut down). Local foodies think home-grown product, Oldrich Sahajdak, who serves up haute Czech fare inspired by a 19th-century Bohemian cookbook at La Degustation Boheme Bourgeoisie, will be next on the prized Michelin compendium.

This is no longer a Kafka’s Prague. It’s not even the expat slacker’s Prague anymore. It’s still one of the most beautiful cities on the planet (and still cheaper than Paris and London), but now the Czech capital has been doused in decadence of another form. Prague, the capital of indulgence, still has its grip. But that grip is now wearing diamond-studded gold rings.