Sveiks, Švejk

Sveiks, Švejk

A Place to Warm up and Stuff your Stomach on a Snowy Evening

If I image a typical Czech pub, it would be a long list of beer on the menu, being carried back and forth in huge beer mugs and lots of loud, slightly drunk and happy people. At a place like that food is secondary. It should be meaty and filling but it is not the first thing you will remember the next morning. Sveiks, Švejk offers something more.

We visited Sveiks, Švejk on a crowded Friday night and a quiet Thursday but I still find it lacking both coziness and lively atmosphere. Visual references to the brave soldier Shweik do not change that and it just feels like a regular pub with a Czech pretense.

That is until you start checking out the menu. It turns out they carry a selection of strong Czech alcohol, several beer brands and an impressive choice of dishes. The short beer list only proves the point that this is a decent restaurant masquerading as a random pub. No, it is not some forgettable pub. It is a place to study the menu for an extensive period of time, not being able to choose what you want because all of it sounds mouthwatering, and finally stuffing your stomach with this satisfyingly filling eastern European food.

We started with a mushroom soup-puree (3.50 Euro), and it turned out to be unbelievably hot, thick, filling, and perfect in its simplicity. I am rarely impressed by such plain dishes but this one was a hit  - nothing needed to be added.

Our second appetizer was Eggplant rolls with feta cheese (4.5 Euro). Same gentle, unpretentious goodness.

Main dishes were good but did not bring any surprises. They probably were not intended to, it's just the soup and the rolls probably put me into an expecting mood. So what I got, in comparison, was just ok. According to my eating (and life) partner, such a judgment was unreasonable but I feel what I feel - soup and rolls were wonderful, mains - less so.

One of the main dishes we got was the Quails prepared in the old Czech method with King Boletes (8.5 Euro). Trying quails for the first time, it felt like eating baby chickens which made me feel like a bad person. That feeling and lots of dirty hand work required to devour the dish is about all I remember about it.

Lamb Sausage (6.5 Euro) with mashed potatoes and stewed cabbage (6.6 Euro) was predictable but a solidly satisfying choice. The sausages and stewed sour cabbage combination was enjoyed even by me, not a sausage person at all. It actually made me appreciate a sausage for not inspiring any existential self-questioning.

We got an apple pie so that we can check "done" on the checklist for the dessert. It did the job but, really, it was a boring apple pie.


This not so modest dinner (including a shot of Krusovice and couple of beers) came to ~40 Euro.

Final score: 4/5



Sveiks, Švejk

Stabu iela 23, Riga, Latvia

https://www.facebook.com/sveiks.svejk   (but the post twice a year..)