#5 Blue Plate Specials

On my first trip to Brno nearly three years ago, I was perplexed by the number of people who seemed to be using food stamps, not only in grocery stores, but in restaurants, too. How could so many people, many of them extremely well-dressed, have food stamps, I wondered. I soon found out, though, that the currency they used wasn’t any sort of public assistance at all. It is customary in the Czech Republic for employers to provide either a cafeteria where the workers receive a free meal every day, or vouchers which the workers can use in pubs or restaurants to get a prepared lunch from the menicka, or what we used to call the Blue Plate specials. Workers can also use these food coupons at grocery stores if they want to make their own lunch or put the vouchers towards the household grocery bill. Since what the employers do is to offer vouchers for a small amount of the face value, everyone who works, I think, takes advantage of them. Who wouldn’t pay about two dollars for a ticket to spend on seven dollars worth of food? Drinks aren’t always included in the meals at cafeterias or restaurants, but beer and soft drinks can be purchased. Even after having lived here for a year and visited here a couple of times, I am still a little surprised to see beer offered and consumed at work.

Last week, we were treated to lunch at my friend’s workplace cafeteria. With his voucher, he was given soup (which is almost always offered at midday meals), a large fried schnitzel, potatoes, a small bowl of cucumber salad, and a small glass of fruit tea---pretty much a normal Czech lunch. For me, having spent some of my childhood in the company of my grandparents, this is my idea of the perfect lunch. Soup, meat and potatoes, and little bit of salad. Who could ask for more? Honestly, it seems to me that nearly every Czech dish is great comfort food. My favorite is Svickova—a slice of bacon-infused beef with a sweet creamy sauce, garnished with a tiny bit of cranberry jam and whipped cream, and served with knedliky. Knedliky to a Czech is like biscuits or cornbread to us Southerners. It’s somewhere between a biscuit (in taste) and light bread or angel food cake in texture. It can be made with either wheat flour and rolls or with potato flour and is cooked in large pinecone shaped rolls by boiling and then sliced with a length of thread. Some people call them dumplings, and although knedliky aren’t at all like our dumplings, they are every bit as good. Like us Southerners and our cornbread, knedliky isn’t a big deal to Czechs unless they don’t have it.

When I’m not in the mood for sweet, or am missing some taste of home I order pork or chicken, with or without sauce, that comes with cooked shredded cabbage. Or I order my husband’s favorite, Kureci Kapsa, which is cheese and ham cooked into a chicken breast and served with potatoes cooked any one of the at least five different ways they are offered every where: boiled, roasted, fried, made into pancakes the texture of a flat crabcake, or mashed. My husband has a weakness for the croquetty, small perfectly round fried potato balls.

It seems to us that it is common for children to be allowed dinners that back home would be the sole prerogative of grandparents to offer. More than once, my son has had his homesickness here appeased with a meal of Ovocny Palacinky, Czech pancakes and fruit. It’s what we would call French crepes filled with preserves and topped with whipped cream and caramel or chocolate sauce. The favorite meal of one of my son’s friends here is Parfait: one gigantic sundae. I’m not kidding about the size: the biggest thing Dairy Queen has to offer is tiny by comparison.