Lunch at Chateau Mcely

Before moving to Europe, lunch was neither a meal I would look forward to nor a meal that could last a couple of hours.  Maybe it is a Canadian thing but we don’t do long lunches.  I can eat a sandwich and salad in under 30 minutes and continue on with my day.  Not here.  I am slowly learning that long lunches are celebrated around Europe.  Long, leisurely lunches are certainly not a weekly occurrence in my life but a couple weekends ago,  some friends and I decided to dress up, and venture out of the city for a special dining experience: Lunch at Chateau Mcely.

I had afternoon tea at Chateau Mcely once before and after such a positive experience, I was curious about their non-sugary fare.  My guests and I each ordered a starter and a main (no, all the food you just looked at was not just for me!) and the consensus was that everyone enjoyed their meals.  The service was a bit slow and overly formal, however we were at a “Chateau” so I guess formal service is expected.  I ordered the carrot and sweet potato soup and fish that was sliced in half and “filled” with roasted root vegetables (see photo above)- both were fresh, flavourful and light.

Our meal + mini road trip was a really nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  If you haven’t done something like this before, I would highly recommend it.  In some cases, long lunches beat long dinners.

Tea at Chateau Mcely

On Sunday afternoon, my fiance and I took a quick, thirty minute drive out of Prague to go for tea at Chateau Mcely in the town of Mcely. The Chateau, located in a tiny village surrounded by forest,  reminded me of a villa that I visited in Florence back in October.  The property sits on a large piece of land with beautiful views of hills, trees and farmland.  It was very quiet this weekend, we were one of three tables in restaurant for tea.

The tea menu is quite large.  I sampled something called Sunshine Mate, which tasted like chocolate, caramel.  A nice tea on its own but when paired with a tea, I kind of wished I ordered a Jasmine tea instead to cut through the sugar.  The dining area is beautiful and large made up of three adjoining rooms plus a fourth enclosed “sun room” outback.  We sat in the first dining area that had a massive French-country-esque wall hutch which housed beautiful platters, tea, champagne and other trinkets.  The restaurant had a light and airy feel to it as all the furnishings were in the white/lavender/eggplant/grey and beige family with an accent of gold in some of the furniture. The dining room also had some impressive cameo wallpaper!

The tea itself was great and the desserts were not overly sweet.  I always think back to my tea at Moroco (in Toronto) which I deemed the best tea ever (in Toronto) but it is so sweet you go into a diabetic shock from the sugar levels in their delicious desserts.  The tea menu at Chateau Mcely had a nice mix of sweet and savoury and the sweet items were not too overpowering so you could actually enjoy them.

Since we weren’t starving, combined a half portion and full portion tea and shared the two.  Tea came with four good sized sandwich halves (cucumber, salmon and a misc. meat I did not try).  On the sweet side there were scones, a homemade marmalade which was topped with mint, mascarpone cheese and fresh butter, two lemon macaron that were a bit overdone, four adorably mini pop-in-your-mouth tarts and two triangles of a brownie/dense chocolate walnut cake.

I would like to go back to Chateau Mcely to try their lunch or dinner one time.  This place would certainly be a beautiful spot to host an event or escape for a weekend of quiet.  The grounds (although snow covered) were beautiful and you feel like you are in another country, only 30 minutes out of the city.  I love this place!

Fondant Covered Valentine’s Day Heart Sugar Cookies

It’s Friday!!  While that does not necessarily mean anything for me this weekend as I have a weekend full of work, that doesn’t mean I won’t make time for a bit of fun.  The three things I am looking forward to most this weekend include:

1. Testing out a sweet heart pancake recipe from a guest poster that will be featured on Lamb411 next week.  I have written about her recipes before in previous blog posts.  I’ll give you a clue here.

2. Baking a chocolate beet cake with beet icing for Valentine’s Day that I wrote about earlier this week.

3. Visiting my first castle in the Czech Republic.  I am headed to Chateau Mcely for tea on Sunday afternoon and I CAN”T WAIT!!  I promise to bring back pictures of the tea and castle grounds pending weather.

In the mean time, a friend of mine kindly reminded me on Facebook of my crazy Valentine’s Day baking bonanza pop-up (in-house) shop that I created back in 2008.  I woke up with the keen idea of supplying people with cookies for Valentine’s Day and wanted to put my cookie decorating skills to practice after having taken multiple courses at Bonnie Gordon’s College of Confectionary Arts (Alumni include Flour Studio, Cake Opera, We Bake in Heels and Bobette and Belle to name a few).

The cookie decorating course was one of my favourites and I was looking for an excuse to cater en-masse!  Well I got my chance and I’m going to share some pictures with you from the endeavour.  If you have never baked mass quantities of anything, it’s no walk in the park but the end result is always rewarding.  I wish I had all my baking materials with me in Prague.  I could go for round two, though not this weekend.