As otherwise strong, independent, professional women, at age 26 and 27 Prague Ginge and I are both very well-aware that we ought surely to have outgrown teenage crushes a long time ago (my last one was on a now shamed Mark Owen from TakeThat in the mid-nineties, as I recall). And yet, even at this stage in adult life, we still both find ourselves utterly, irrevocably, irreversibly in love with the gorgeous, divine, Adonis-like specimen of manhood that is the exquisite Edward Cullen / Robert Pattinson of ‘Twilight’ vampire fame, and – despite all current professions of female friendship and solidarity – would cheerfully fight each other to the death for the chance to marry him and have his beautiful, beautiful babies. And I don’t even like bloody babies.
And so needless to say, in typical obsessive teenage girly girl style, yesterday evening saw us two over-aged and over-excited Twihard groupies waiting outside the cinema with specially pre-ordered tickets in hand to see the Prague first night opening of ‘Eclipse’, the latest film in the ongoing ‘Twilight’ saga. In fairness, at least we didn’t have “I Heart Robert” / “Team Edward” / “Bite Me” or any other tweenie inanities daubed in facepaint across our cheeks or start jumping up and down squealing / crying hysterically or anything - thankfully we are not quite that far gone yet...
However, back to the review at hand. Lest we swoon from hunger rather than sheer unadulterated ardour and thereby inadvertently miss out on precious seconds of all the on-screen R-Patz action, we sensibly decided to line our stomachs first at nearby Middle Eastern joint Handedan, a little Turkish fast food place on Jindřišská.
There is a huge Turkish menu featured here, including traditional dishes such as stuffed peppers or aubergines, lahmacun, moussaka and baklava (plus a whole range of other things I couldn’t decipher at a glance in Turkish / Czech translation), as well as your standard pide / kebabs etc. In fact the only things they didn’t seem to have on the menu were my two personal favourites of falafel and halloumi, which I thought was a bit of a shame for all the Prague veggie kebab lovers out there.
Staff were really friendly, joining in on the joke and insisting on a photo when they picked up on my veiled attempts to take a few sneaky shots of the place without their noticing (well, it’s really hard to be discrete in a tiny hole-in-the-wall fast food joint...).
Naturally I went for the kebab option, with choices of meat beef or chicken. Having gone for chicken in my last two previous kebab reviews, this time I went for the beef dürüm at a fairly pricy 90kč.
It was pretty sizeable, but the meat was unfortunately really dry and not particularly tasty (probably down to the fact that the old dead man’s leg had been grazed nearly down to the bone at the time of ordering) and there wasn’t near enough sauce for my liking. On the upside, the salad was fresh and the bread pleasantly soft and warm - I’d probably give this one just a 6/10 in comparison to those I’ve reviewed before at Pasha and Saranda.
Prague Ginge, on the other hand, rather daintily eschewed the kebab options altogether (I am seriously beginning to doubt her supposed hardnut Northern credentials...), instead going for one of the chicken casseroles on offer behind the counter, which came served with rice and salad at 100kč for everything – I’ve no idea what the actual Turkish term for the dish would have been.
Her verdict was that the chicken was really generously portioned and tender, the rice nicely cooked and not at all cloddy or claggy like it can be in some fast food joints, and the salad welcomingly fresh. On the other hand, she did think the sauce could have used a lot more zing.
Which pretty much wraps it up this week for pre-cinematic Hanedan bites – in short a friendly little place with decent eats, which I’d like to re-visit again just for the sake of working my way through more of their extensive Turkish menu and maybe having a second go with one of their chicken kebabs.
As for a now happily replete Prague Ginge and I, needless to say we both went on to spend the next 124 minutes gazing adoringly up at the screen in the company of a hundred-odd teenage girls all secretly fantasizing about a vampire-human-werewolf threeway. On the upside, I have at least picked up a new niche set of mythological Czech vocabulary from the sub-titles as a result...
On a final note, I well know that I fully deserve your scorn, derision and contempt for publicly airing my juvenile, lovesick yearnings on here, and can only hope I haven’t lost your much appreciated readership as well as respect as a result. Please bear with me and I solemnly promise to stick to the food next time and keep all obsessive adolescent infatuations to myself in future... ;-))
And so needless to say, in typical obsessive teenage girly girl style, yesterday evening saw us two over-aged and over-excited Twihard groupies waiting outside the cinema with specially pre-ordered tickets in hand to see the Prague first night opening of ‘Eclipse’, the latest film in the ongoing ‘Twilight’ saga. In fairness, at least we didn’t have “I Heart Robert” / “Team Edward” / “Bite Me” or any other tweenie inanities daubed in facepaint across our cheeks or start jumping up and down squealing / crying hysterically or anything - thankfully we are not quite that far gone yet...
However, back to the review at hand. Lest we swoon from hunger rather than sheer unadulterated ardour and thereby inadvertently miss out on precious seconds of all the on-screen R-Patz action, we sensibly decided to line our stomachs first at nearby Middle Eastern joint Handedan, a little Turkish fast food place on Jindřišská.
There is a huge Turkish menu featured here, including traditional dishes such as stuffed peppers or aubergines, lahmacun, moussaka and baklava (plus a whole range of other things I couldn’t decipher at a glance in Turkish / Czech translation), as well as your standard pide / kebabs etc. In fact the only things they didn’t seem to have on the menu were my two personal favourites of falafel and halloumi, which I thought was a bit of a shame for all the Prague veggie kebab lovers out there.
Staff were really friendly, joining in on the joke and insisting on a photo when they picked up on my veiled attempts to take a few sneaky shots of the place without their noticing (well, it’s really hard to be discrete in a tiny hole-in-the-wall fast food joint...).
Naturally I went for the kebab option, with choices of meat beef or chicken. Having gone for chicken in my last two previous kebab reviews, this time I went for the beef dürüm at a fairly pricy 90kč.
It was pretty sizeable, but the meat was unfortunately really dry and not particularly tasty (probably down to the fact that the old dead man’s leg had been grazed nearly down to the bone at the time of ordering) and there wasn’t near enough sauce for my liking. On the upside, the salad was fresh and the bread pleasantly soft and warm - I’d probably give this one just a 6/10 in comparison to those I’ve reviewed before at Pasha and Saranda.
Prague Ginge, on the other hand, rather daintily eschewed the kebab options altogether (I am seriously beginning to doubt her supposed hardnut Northern credentials...), instead going for one of the chicken casseroles on offer behind the counter, which came served with rice and salad at 100kč for everything – I’ve no idea what the actual Turkish term for the dish would have been.
Her verdict was that the chicken was really generously portioned and tender, the rice nicely cooked and not at all cloddy or claggy like it can be in some fast food joints, and the salad welcomingly fresh. On the other hand, she did think the sauce could have used a lot more zing.
Which pretty much wraps it up this week for pre-cinematic Hanedan bites – in short a friendly little place with decent eats, which I’d like to re-visit again just for the sake of working my way through more of their extensive Turkish menu and maybe having a second go with one of their chicken kebabs.
As for a now happily replete Prague Ginge and I, needless to say we both went on to spend the next 124 minutes gazing adoringly up at the screen in the company of a hundred-odd teenage girls all secretly fantasizing about a vampire-human-werewolf threeway. On the upside, I have at least picked up a new niche set of mythological Czech vocabulary from the sub-titles as a result...
On a final note, I well know that I fully deserve your scorn, derision and contempt for publicly airing my juvenile, lovesick yearnings on here, and can only hope I haven’t lost your much appreciated readership as well as respect as a result. Please bear with me and I solemnly promise to stick to the food next time and keep all obsessive adolescent infatuations to myself in future... ;-))
as always a good and amusing review..though really..twilight!!!!!!!!! saying that the girl is quite cute...
ReplyDeleteI know, I know, am old enough to know better - but still... ;-))
ReplyDeleteso sad... you had to go few meters longer to politickych veznu street to "istanbul kebab" fastfood. it's the best in prague i know...
ReplyDeleteIf you manage to find the ultimate Döner in Prague, all will be forgiven. :)
ReplyDeleteI've gotta go with Istanbul kebab as well. It's not a great doner, but it's the best we've got (that I know of). A much bigger restaurant / cafe too. But their hours are pretty goofy; they've been closed several times when I've tried to go at what I thought was a reasonable mid-evening time. Does anybody know their actual hours?
ReplyDelete