40 Years in Beer, Part Thirty Six: One fine evening in Košice with Pilsner Urquell at the Zlatý Dukát

Previously: 40 Years in Beer, Part Thirty Five: Košice comes into view and the Zlatý Bažant flows.

Drink beer with bitter hops, eat morning soup with garlic, and you will live long.
— Central European proverb

Originating as “An Evening on the Town,” this article was written by longhand during the winter of 1991-1992, while I was working in Košice. To the best of my sleuthing capabilities, it appears that the Zlatý Dukát restaurant on Hlavná ulica (Main Street) is now a modern hotel under the same name.

I suppose it never occurred to me to take photographs of the exterior, and on the night in question (yes, there were a great many others) I didn’t bring my camera. The cover photograph was taken just before I returned home in early 1992, during a goodbye party of sorts at the Zlatý Dukát. The dentist Joe is wearing the red vest.

An Evening on the Town

Jozef, a dentist, was a late addition to the roster of my conversational English class. He had attended only one session prior to a Friday afternoon in early November, yet even in his absence, I had the feeling that the two of us had more in common than elongated statures.

A big man with a relaxed, open outlook, Jozef had played hockey and soccer in the semi-professional Slovak leagues of the recently concluded Communist era.

My hunch that we might be thinking alike was borne out during that same Friday afternoon class, when I noticed his eyes widen as I told the group about my forthcoming side trip, a cross-country rail pilgrimage to Plzeň, home of the Pilsner Urquell brewery (Plzeňský Prazdroj in Czech).

Flashing a sly grin, Jozef approached me at the end of the hour. “On next Wednesday,” he said, “what will you do at night? May we make a meeting? We can go to a good restaurant in Košice for beer, and my colleagues will go, too.”

There were no objections from the lectern.

After class on the appointed evening, Jozef reminded me to meet him and the others in the hospital’s main lobby at 5:00 p.m., and when I came down the stairs, he was waiting. Two other students, Ludmila and Vladimir, also were there.

Together we piled into Jozef’s weather beaten, dull red, four door Škoda. It isn’t easy to place a year of birth on Communist-era cars, since the same basic models were reissued again and again; over the rumbling of the engine, I guessed it was a 1970 model. The other passengers laughed heartily.

It was a ’79.

We sputtered from the hospital parking lot and lurched downhill toward the center of Košice, past the 130-year-old city brewery (long since closed) and onto Vojenská Street. The Škoda veered right and slowly accelerated up Moyzesova, then left into the pitch black of Malinovského.

Everyone laughed at the provincial ambiance of the unlit, deserted street. “It is like Las Vegas, yes?” said Vladimir, and Ludmila answered: “yes, Las Vegas in Slovakia.”

“Do you know this street?” asked Ludmila. “We go to the back way,” said Jozef. “It is better to park.”

The brawny dentist gently eased the Škoda into a space. The car coughed rudely. We began walking, passing through an arched alleyway with chipped, peeling walls, entering a courtyard dotted with stacks of rotted building materials.

The back door to the Zlatý Dukát (Golden Ducat) was open, and behind a veil of steam the kitchen staff was busy. A greasy man in a well-traveled black suit seemed absolutely delighted to see us. We were greeted warmly, and he nodded knowingly as Jozef spoke.

We were led to the large ground floor room where clusters of local men and an occasional woman sat at small, square tables. No music, no television, just Slovaks seated in groups, eating, drinking and talking. The room was devoid of decoration apart from standard issue 1960s vintage (formerly white) curtains and a scattering of frayed Pilsner Urquell posters high up on the walls.

Plumes of acrid cigarette smoke rose from the tables and were dispersed by the lilting motion of a single waitress navigating the floor with a tray of half liter draught beers held expertly aloft, so as to avoid the unconscious gesturing of the thirsty storytellers.

The man in the black suit ushered us into a curtained cubicle marked as “RESERVE” on a hand-lettered strip of paper. The cubicle was to be our refuge for the evening. In a space the size of a walk-in closet there were six chairs, a table and hooks on the wall for coats. It was intimate, to say the least.

Having settled into our seats and dispensed with small talk, it was time for the business at hand. Jozef ordered four beers. Ludmila leaned over and asked me if I wanted to eat; I was reminded of a German war bride, a Hollywood character actress or a Gabor sister. She spoke good, though heavily accented, English.

Jozef abruptly announced his unshakable preference for a dish called tlačenka: “Do you like our food?” he asked. “Tlačenka is Slovak food of tradition. At this restaurant, it is very good. Okay?” He literally smacked his lips.

“Maybe it isn’t so good for you,” said Ludmila. “Maybe your stomach is not good for our Slovak food.” Vladimir laughed. Jozef looked dismayed. “No, no,” he said, “it is best food for beer. We eat tlačenka and drink beer. Yes?”

Yes, I agreed.

The beer arrived. One taste confirmed that it was Pilsner Urquell. Three tastes later, it was gone. So was Jozef’s. Vladimir, good-natured and quiet, abandoned his half-full glass to find the waitress and order another round.

I told Ludmila that Slovak food was fine. The previous evening, I’d gone with another student to the Gazdovska wine cellar, an atmospheric, slightly scruffy restaurant where the specialty was bryndzové halušky, which I’d heard much about but not yet sampled.

Every Slovak I’d spoken to considered bryndzové halušky to be incompatible with American tastes, perhaps owing to its topping of melted sheep’s cheese. Naturally, the Gazdovska cellar’s bryndzové halušky was excellent: pea-sized dumplings in a white gravy, topped with tangy cheese and real bacon bits, and accompanied by a glass of golden, sweet Tokaj wine.

Back at the Zlatý Dukát, Ludmila was impressed by my familiarity with Slovak cuisine. Moments later, two platters of tlačenka arrived.

I might have visibly yawned, for in the lunch meat section of the typical American supermarket, you’ll readily find tlačenka. It’s called head cheese, or brawn; when pickled, it is souse. Having grown up in rural Indiana, pig parts hardly were a mystery to me.

With obvious relish, Jozef said “watch me, okay?” He shifted a stack of raw, chopped onions onto slices of the compressed, unidentifiable, gelatinous meat. He ladled vinegar from a small tureen, dousing the quivering stack of meat by-product and onion.

After that, all was flashing forks and lengthy drinks of what, to me, was (and remains) the world’s finest pilsner beer. I didn’t hesitate to follow suit, and the tlačenka was quite good. Wine would be superfluous. Why waste time contemplating internal organs and slaughterhouse scrapings so long as they pair with beer?

Later Jozef had a main course of turkey breast stuffed with ham and cheese with what looked to be a full pound of fries. I followed suit, and then we had another platter of tlačenka, although by this point, I was getting full.

All the while, half-liters of Pilsner Urquell disappeared as Jozef, Ludmila and Vladimir regaled me with tales of Slovakia.

Contempt for both recently deceased communism and Košice’s steadily declining local beer was freely expressed. Jozef, who voiced a preference for Budvar over Pilsner Urquell, delighted in telling a “true” story about Cassovar, the beer made by Košice’s brewery the one just down the hill from the hospital, which did not outlast the 1990s.

“Our brewery sent a bottle of Cassovar to Plzen for tests to the laboratory,” began Jozef, “and the brewers waited for an answer. They wait for one week, then another week. And nothing!”

Jozef paused, frowning.

“Then comes back the letter to Košice, and it said there is no need to worry; your horse will be okay.”

The laughter had barely subsided when the curtain parted to reveal Andrej, a youthful surgeon from the same English class. Several days earlier, I’d helped him write a letter to a European surgical society, a note in which he expressed genuinely heartfelt thanks for being accepted as a member and equally sincere regrets that he would be unable to attend the annual conference.

He couldn’t afford a journey to Amsterdam on a Slovak surgeon’s salary, which in his case wasn’t much more than the 2,900 crowns ($100) monthly amount paid to me to teach conversational English.

“Welcome,” said Jozef, as yet showing no signs of either slowing or becoming drunk. “We are eating tlačenka and drinking Prazdroj. Please, you must sit with us and drink. Okay?”

Okay.

Our slippery, black-suited host chose this moment to enter and speak with Jozef. When he left, Jozef said, “Last Saturday, I have duty. I treat 38 patients in this time. My pay for this day is normal, like any other day.”

Nothing extra for weekend duty?

“No,” he replied, wiping foam from his mustache. “For this day I am paid 150 crowns.”

Five dollars.

“And this man, this restaurant man, he wants to make a meeting for me to examine teeth. He does not wish to pay me, but these waiters make more money than me.”

“More than all of us,” said Ludmila.

Vladimir shrugged from behind his glass: “It is a problem.”

We spoke of other problems and of the system in the bad old days, and the wonderful beer encouraged candor. Andrej said, “We want the changes, but for us it is difficult. Maybe we will be like America someday.”

Jozef reacted to Andrej’s words. “My friend was player for the Czechoslovakia national team in hockey,” he said, “and then he played in Los Angeles with Wayne Gretzky. He tells to me in a letter that all is good in America except one thing. The beer is very bad. It is true, that the beer in America is bad? Why?”

Why ask why? I merely nodded sadly and finished my Pilsner Urquell.

(2023 addendum: These many years later, American beer has gotten far better)

It was 9:15 p.m. Closing time was at 10:00 p.m., so we ordered more beer. The waitress told Jozef that beer could not be served any longer on that particular night. Jozef asked her if the restaurant had run out of beer. She said no, there was plenty of beer and they had decided to quit serving it.

The reason? None. I was reminded of the time at Szportstime Pizza when the new employee panicked because the beer had quit coming out of the wall.

The Zlatý Dukát was emptying, the restroom attendant had abandoned his post, not unexpectedly given the stench and his high level of intoxication. The ashtray woman was in the process of completing her only job: shifting mounds of butts into a garbage can.

Ludmila sighed. “It is not private yet,” she said, “so the workers don’t care.” Vladimir and Andrej laughed, and Andrej added, “Maybe it will change.”

Jozef snorted and waved through the open curtain, but not even his black-suited future patient could reverse the closing decree. It was time to go. Jozef paid the bill for the evening’s festivities; it came to 300 crowns, or $10 – two days’ pay.

We called it a night, and I walked up the hill, past the brewery that housed the ill horse, and home to my room in the hospital’s lodgings for visiting doctors.

Next: 40 Years in Beer, Part Thirty Seven: Andy Warhol, the Tatras, Magic Johnson and wonderful Mamut.