photo: Jan Holoubek, PrahaIN.cz/Katův šleh, illustration photo
Katův šleh was once a staple of Czech pubs. This is also why it belongs in the category of dishes from the nineties. Among a certain group of people, this spicy dish is still very popular. Although, compared to the last century, the possibilities of where to order it are quite limited.
Anyone who still doesn’t know what executioner’s whip is must have tasted any kind of meat mixture. For example, on a toaster. Kaťák, as this dish is popularly called, was and is also prepared with potato chips or French fries, very rarely with rice.
Compared to the classic meat mixture, it has a specific taste.
It is a tradition among the pubs that the executioner’s whip was once prepared as a very cheap dish. Leftover meat from the previous day was used, the base was from the cheapest ketchup and the mixture had to be very spicy, for real guys, to mask all the other taste.
They say there is strength in simplicity. And judging by the number of pubs and restaurants that once offered this dish, it was definitely a success. However, the era of the katák is long over. Its massive expansion, like other dishes from the gastronomy of the nineties, has disappeared.
Famous chefs on nineties cuisine:
„There are people who like a simple schnitzel or beef broth with liver dumplings, but they don’t like Kat’s whipped cream or chicken steak with peaches. I was already born into gastronomy, which was a bit shifted. Our generation of chefs is not so affected by this anymore, our practice was around 1994, it had already shifted a little. We had the opportunity to work outside the republic. This was important from the point of view of practice and the development of gastronomy,” said Filip Sajler.
„The consumer has certainly moved on. We recently did a customer survey and people want such ‘real’ things and quality. And I also think that gastronomy used to be a bit out of necessity, what was available on the market for raw materials. There was fruit in a can, there was cheese, so it was somehow invented. It was a difficult period, a bit dark“, he continued.
„There were standards, so all the pubs cooked according to that, it was a problem that people couldn’t be creative. But on the other hand, those things are not bad in principle. When you want to cook a Czech classic, those recipes often work. However, the problem was that according to those recipes you had to cook everywhere, the variety disappeared,” outlined Roman Paulus.
Source: PrahaIN.cz
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Let’s go back to the executioner’s whip. PrahaIN.cz found out if it is still possible to order this classic in Prague. And we will reveal right away that it is more widespread in Prague businesses than you would expect.
Don’t look for it in the tourist restaurants in the center. One unnamed one offers, for example, dumplings with eggs, sometimes called “leftover food” among gastronomes, for 298 kroner, but there was no place for a katák.
Up to Kaťák
However, anyone who ordered it in the last century would be surprised at the price of 295 crowns for a katák with potato chips. Restaurant Pivovarská in Uhříněvs is now offering it for this amount. According to the menu, the mixture has 200 grams and the potato pancakes are homemade.
This is the most expensive option we’ve seen so far.
It is cheaper in the restaurant u Študák, which is located a short distance from the Jewish furnaces in Žižkov. The operator Jiří Podroužek confirmed to us the interest in this dish, even if it is not the best seller.
“Since we’re a completely different type of restaurant, we’re more for the locals, the older ones are popular with kat’s whipped cream. I can’t say for sure that it’s a top, but people wear it. If they didn’t have it, I would have removed it from the menu a long time ago,” says Podroužek. “There are new food trends: young people are already eating something else and the population is changing,” he says, looking for reasons why executioner’s whip is no longer on all menus.
You can find it, for example, in Radotín at Restaurant Na Viničké. There it currently costs 129 crowns without side dish. It is about twenty crowns more expensive at Hostinc u Součků, which is, of course, in Bojov, where you can drive at least half an hour from Prague. Closer to Pražan will be Holešovice, where the Restaurant u Divadla is located, and it offers a roller coaster for 155 crowns. But without an attachment.
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Temporarily, executioner’s whip was also on the menu at Restaurant u Vlčák, which is located a short distance from Wenceslas Square. They had a retro week here, in which, in addition to the executioner’s whip, they offered, for example, chicken steak with peaches.
“We had it like that for one week. There was quite a lot of interest, it was possible. As far as I remember, we didn’t like fish fillets very much. But people took the executioner’s whipping. We also had a breast with a peach, that’s ridiculous, but it was also possible,” says Jan Vlček. However, he does not want to include the food in the permanent menu. “Now we make a meat mixture in a potato cake, which is even more popular than the executioner’s whipped cream. It’s very different, ketchup is put in the cake and there are such rather disparate things, it’s a strange invention,” he says.
In many other Prague restaurants, the meat mixture is offered, often with potato chips. We can say from our own experience that it has nothing to do with executioner’s whipping.
But then there are spicy mixes that don’t differ much. For example, the Švejk restaurant u Brázdů offers this and it is called “Lieutenant DUBA’s spicy chicken noodles”.
Do you know other restaurants that do kata’s whip? And how did you like it there? Let us know in an editorial email or comments.
2024-03-03 08:50:15
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