Ichnusa Botega Bistro

Bottom-​line: This one is tough to write. Very good quality ingredients and good service, but there was a disappointing lack of flavor in the main dishes we tried. I honestly expected more. Ideally I’d give 3.5 stars (not possible on Unilocal), so I’ll assume it was an off-​night and give them 4 stars instead of 3.
Our experience:
This was one of our ‘fancy’ dinners while visiting Prague. Ichnusa is expensive by Prague standards, but it had good reviews, and hence our expectations were high.
Burratta for two (appetizer): Wonderful! By far our favorite part of the meal. It was a large serving of burratta with flavorful grape tomatoes, a bit of bread, and the tomatoes and greens were lightly drizzled with a vinegarette-​like dressing. Easily shareable by two people (or even three). We happily ate all of it and asked for a bit more bread to go with the delicious cheese.
Duck with saffron rice: The duck was perfectly cooked (medium rare and crisp on the outside). That said, the overall flavor profile/​seasoning was too simple and muted. The richness of the duck and the fact that it was perfectly cooked made it still very enjoyable. The side for this dish was saffron rice, which again, really could have used more flavor. So I enjoyed the dish, mainly for the well-​cooked duck, but I felt like there was so much wasted potential here.
Pasta with Shrimp, peppercorns, capers, basil, etc: Disappointing. The best I can say is that the pasta was fairly «pleasant» in its very mild flavor. I could not really taste the capers, basil, or pepper that were supposed to bring this dish to life. Occasionally I found a piece of peppercorn to briefly add a tiny spark of life to the dish, but only rarely. There were about 5 unshelled shrimp on top, which looks plentiful at first, but once emptied of their meat, there wasn’t much shellfish to speak of. That would have been fine if only the pasta itself had much more of the anticipated flavors. I would have done better in 10 minutes at home by mixing some good-​quality pasta with garlic, olive oil, and red paper flakes (better yet if you add a can of olive-​oil packed tuna). That would have been a dish that was actually flavorful. This was just disappointingly bland.
Despite a few things that were done very well (the burrata and the way the duck was cooked) I left feeling disappointed. Both of our main dishes were by no means terrible, but they were lacking in the excitement and flavor that I expected.

We stayed at an apartment on this quieter side of Prague. I had checked for restraints nearby for our first night. Quiet street for outdoor dining. Local clientele. We had a calamari salad for starter — tender with wonderful flavor with buts of broccoli. Two of us shared sea bass which was also nice. We had their «local» beer. Overall a great way to start a week in Prague.

This place has the most friendly atmosphere you can imagine. There is no menu but the food is always wonderful and as long as you go with the recommendation of the waitress, you can never go wrong. Its great for chilled evenings with friends as well as for romantic couple evenings. Their food will always impress you and you will leave happy and with a smile on your face :)

Sure it’s a bit intimidating to order food when there’s no menu but its so worth It! Waitress will try her best to read the list of items available. Asked for some suggestions after choosing a few dishes on out own. Everything was so delicious… eating here was definitely one of the highlights of visiting Prague.