Restaurant Skanzeen

About 3 mins down the hill towards the Mendel museum from our house, there is a restaurant called Skanzeen.  I have been there with my hubby before, but this time we took Ken-chan and Kae-chan with us.  It is a Slovak and Wallachian restaunrant, and the ambiance is great. Inside the restaurant is decorated with woods, stones, bricks, and different kinds of plates and artifacts.  Just a wild guess, but it seems to be mimicing the peasant house in Slovak and Wallachian areas.

Slovak is well known, but most of us probably don't know what Wallachian means. Wallachia is a southern region of Romania that is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians, but I believe this Wallachia means "Moravian Wallachia," which is a mountainous region located in the easternmost part of Moravia, near the Slovakian border.  It seems that the region was called Moravian Wallachia, as it was the place Romanian shepherds from Wallachia region migrated between the 14th and 17th century. The language has been lost, but the culture as well as the culinary culture remained.

There are so many items on the menu, but we ordered most significant ones:

1) "The" garlic soup
I am not sure if it is so much of Wallachian and Slovak, as I see it at the regular Czech restaurants, too.  The garlic soup here has lots of croutons and cheese (at the bottom), and it is one of my favorites of all in so far.

2) Halušky
The famous central European dish. It sort of reminds me of Spätzle from Switzerland. It is a smaller version of dumpling (or round version of pasta), and it is typically made out of flour or potatoes. It is topped with some kind of very strong cheese, which I cannot tolerate to eat a lot unfortunately. And it is also topped with the bacon bits, which I don't particularly love, either. So, this is not my dish but my hubby's #1 favorite.

3) Lokše (dried potato pancake)
It is a famous Slovak dish. The pancake looks more like a crape or tortilla but is made out of potatoes. You can choose what to put inside. We ordered Lokše with spicy pork, cheese (again!), and something rather in it. Simply put, it is very similar to Enchilada :)

4) Jánošíkova žebra
First we thought this might be a Zebra meat.:-) But, it wasn't. It was a roasted pork ribs. I tried to google-translate the word, but I couldn't tell what Jánošíkova meant. Although I am not a big pork eater or rib eater, I liked this especially with the hot sauce served with it. I love very spicy (hot) food, and ever since I moved to Czech Republic, I have been missing spicy-hot foods. So, I really appreciated the hot sauce.

5) Mixed Salad
I was imagining the mixed salad with lots of lettuce, but there was no lettuce in it. It was made out of cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage, green peppers, cheese, and bacon bits. After eating so much cheese, I just skipped the cheese and bacon bits part and focused on the veggies.




What a feast! I would highly recommend this restaurant, if you are in Brno.