The Great American Saloon Series / Cincinnati on the Vltava
Newberry, Jon
Prague H aving spent the better i5art of the last twenty years—better, that is, than the parts I spent somewhere else—at Waldeck's Bar in Cincinnati, Ohio, I had good reason to suppose myself...
...Budvar, which owns the rights to the Budweiser trademark in the Czech and Slovak lands, may have stooped to making a "Budweiser Light," but turning over control to Anheuser-Busch is quite another matter...
...Leon smiles more at the diners but cracks more jokes in the front room...
...bare tables surrounded by benches and chairs...
...When I handed my mug to Leon and motioned for him to fill it up again, he did, but then he set it down to let the foam settle and handed me another full mug that was sitting there ready to go...
...fluorescent ceiling lights...
...yellowed plaster walls...
...There's a front room that contains the bar, with room near the entrance for stand-up drinkers and people who want to listen to Leon's wisecracks...
...My wife and I began referring to U Soucku as "Waldeck's...
...Pilsen's Pilsner Urquell, the birthplace of modern lager beer, is still regarded as a symbol of Czech brewing excellence...
...Leon meanwhile took a little sip of his glass, smiled and nodded his head in appreciation, set the rest of it down on a shelf behind the bar, and returned to tapping beers...
...Glasses and mugs are washed, if you can call it that, in a large sink that's built into the standard-issue, stainless-steel service bar...
...In most cases, the dishwater is still rolling down the sides of the glass when the bartender flips it over and begins filling it again...
...A few weeks after we started frequenting the place, I observed one of the regulars order a double shot of Jagermeister and tell Leon to have one himself...
...The beer halls in Kobylisy offer quite a contrast to neighborhood saloons in the United States...
...Leon, too, tries to talk to us in German even though we keep telling him we're Americans, and has never tried to overcharge us or slip in a "cover charge" on our tab...
...Never mind the less-thanWestern quality of the accoutrements: the beer is cold, 25 cents a half-liter, and still arguably the best in the world, Budweiser Light notwithstanding...
...Out back is a wood-paneled dining room with smaller tables and a poster for Pilsner Urquell, which the bar doesn't even carry...
...When we first started going into U Soucku, I was still suffering pangs of homesickness and imagined that Leon might be a kind of Czech version of Marty Waldeck, the recently deceased owner and chief instigator at Waldeck's Bar...
...That tactic had always succeeded fairly well at Waldeck's, but it doesn't work with Czech beer, which has a thick head on it that takes a minute or two to subside...
...U Soucku is a fairly typical Czech beer hall...
...Prague H aving spent the better i5art of the last twenty years—better, that is, than the parts I spent somewhere else—at Waldeck's Bar in Cincinnati, Ohio, I had good reason to suppose myself immune to common barroom irritants like dirty glasses, ambient smoke, and willful disregard for restroom sanitation...
...and posters touting the Velkepopovicky beer that U Soucku serves on tap...
...Still, it's often said that the only thing in Czechoslovakia that the Communists didn't ruin is the beer...
...Czech beer halls, meanwhile, freed from state ownership and securely back in the hands of private citizens, are flourishing...
...The procedure consists of submerging them in the water, and—if time permits—swishing thenkaround a little...
...Keegan slapped $20 on the bar and pointed to a 16-ounce bottle of Red Hot sauce...
...The front room oom is generally favored by drinkers, while the inner room is moredining-oriented, favored by couples and the better-dressed...
...Bartenders have to fill a glass with foam ahead of time, let it settle a bit, then repeat the procedure two or three times until they get a glass that's about 80 percent beer...
...Leon poured two...
...The distinction is fuzzy, however, and you're free to sit wherever you can find a seat...
...The kitchen is further back, and the food is worth going home to avoid...
...The smoke from Czech cigarettes is acrid enough to etch your eyeballs, and thick enough to make actually buying your own entirely optional...
...a slot machine...
...glasses I came into contact with, I'd minimize my chances of swallowing something that could kill me...
...0 ne of our favorite hangouts is Hostinec U Soucku, a friendly working-class joint that's run by a guy named Leon and his wife...
...Leon always wears a white butcher's coat on the job, similar to the apron that Waldeck used to wear when he ran a butcher shop in the front of his bar...
...Then last fall I moved to Prague and started hanging out in Czech beer halls...
...Then they're pulled out and drained on the bar-top...
...The incident ended all but the most superficial comparison in my mind between Leon and Marty Waldeck...
...I once tried handing my empty mug to Leon, motioning for him to refill it for me, on the theory that if I reduced the number of different...
...The only time I ever saw Waldeck shy away from a drink was when he bet Dennis Keegan $20 that he could polish off any bottle behind the bar—Keegan's choice—in two hours...
...At the U Cihelny bar down the street from my apartment, I've watched them wash half-liter mugs a dozen at a time, six in each hand, twirling them through the wash basin like a wheel...
...I'd often seen Waldeck down two fifths of whiskey with a couple dozen beer chasers in the course of a day's work, and in twenty years I never saw him sip anything...
...They raised a toast to each other's health, and the old guy tossed back his in a gulp...
...My wife and I live in a middle-class neighborhood called Kobylisy, about three miles due north of downtown on a hill overlooking the Vltava River winding through the city...
Vol. 26 • May 1993 • No. 5
