A steak from Czech beef
Amaso: Guaranteed quality meat
Why did Ambiente get involved with meat?
Radek: About ten years ago, we did a survey of the kind of meat we offered in Ambiente restaurants, and we found that ninety percent was from abroad. That's when we started talking about how to make Czech meat as good as foreign meat. That was the first impulse, and then followed several years of research and trial and error.
What happened next?
Radek: We started searching the internet, we read old Czech and modern foreign books about meat, we met with various people and of course we tried things in different ways. And we came to the conclusion that the key to success would be the ageing of the meat.
Vlasta: We literally felt that we had matured to that realisation! That's when we started working with František Štefunka from TORO Hlavečník. When he thought an animal was suitable, he had it hung and matured after slaughter. We started taking the aged meat from him and figuring out how best to process it.
What did it look like in practice?
Radek: We used to buy quarters of meat from Štefunka. In the beginning, we aged them for forty days, but gradually we increased the ageing time and experimented with it in various ways. We had a small "laboratory" under the restaurant La Degustation, where we tried to break down the quarters, grill the meat and do various experiments with other chefs from Ambiente.
Vlasta: Honestly, it didn't have a head or a tail. Sometimes we felt more like we were in a marketplace, where everyone is arguing about which piece of meat they should take to their kitchen.
Radek: One day, the other chefs gradually returned to work in their restaurants and Vlasta and I were left alone. But even with the meat itself, it wasn't easy, as Mr. Štefunka was preparing a reconstruction at the slaughterhouse and he couldn't devote himself to the ageing process anymore.
So you decided to go it alone?
Vlasta: Exactly. We rented the very first box in the plant in Jenč, got a meat rack and did experiments with ageing. We arrived at the slaughterhouse, asked them to buy meat breeds for us, we picked up lotsthat we were interested in and aged them ourselves. We hung them individually or dipped them in boiled tallow.
Radek: We had a rack welded at that time, which cost us about sixty thousand. Empty, it weighed maybe two hundred kilos and loaded it was much more, so it was impossible to move it, which was of course necessary... So we emptied it, arranged for it to be taken to the workshop and had wheels added. The transport alone cost us ten thousand, plus the wheels, so the first equipment was very expensive. But we still have the rack today!
Vlasta: Anyway, the beginning was awkward. For example, they ordered aged rib-eye steaks from us at Pizza Nuova and one was perfect and another one couldn't even be bitten. So we kept wondering what the deal was. At that time, we also met with Professor Prokůpková from the College of Agriculture, who told us about the categories of meat, that there was a quality scale, we talked about fat, and she also told us the theory of what happens during ageing. That's when we understood that it's not enough to age the meat, but that the origin, genetics and feeding of the animal also play a role.
How long did it take to find the optimal combination?
Radek: About five years. We came to it gradually, and one of the strategic decisions was that we would work with Czech Fleckvieh cattle. But we still hadn't won, for example we didn't know why some animals have fat and others don't.
Where did you that find out?
Vlasta: An inspirational trip to New York helped us a lot. It was quite challenging before we left. We had to arrange all the orders in advance and figure out their transportation. And to make matters worse, I had to have my gallbladder removed a fortnight before the trip.
Radek: I took Vlasta to the hospital in Krč directly from the slaughterhouse in Pribram. They kept him on the ward for a week, but he managed the operation and recovery without any major problems and of course he flew out with us. In New York we mainly went to pubs and tasted local meat. And there we confirmed, among other things, that we shouldn't be using the meat of a bull.
Vlasta: When we went to get a steak at the famous Lobel butcher shop, I proudly showed them a picture of our meat. Lobel looked at it and said "lean". He explained to us that this meat sucked because there was no tallow in it. We were a little shocked. However, we came back from New York full of new impulses. We found that we needed fatter animals, preferably heifers and steers,but nobody kept them. So we decided we'd have to persuade breeders.
How did you persuade farmers to take steers and heifers when the general perception was that bull meat was better?
Radek: Our main contact was Jakub Červenka, the director of Zbirožská. Together we had to convince the owner of the company directly, to explain to him why he didn't need to get rid of the heifers so soon. We wanted to take them from them, but we needed them at 750 kg. Normally they are about 500 kg. Our arguments had to be strong for him to be willing to invest, so I took an electric grill to the meeting, a few steaks, and grilled a few portions for everyone on the management team. Success was achieved and we are still working with together to this day.
Vlasta: Gradually he started supplying us with steers as well. Together we created a "guide to raising steers". We wrote down what the individual animals should look like, how the animal should be fed in the last period of its life and so on.
So you've also drawn up a recipe for the ideal feed mix?
Radek: To tell you the truth, it's not easy. First of all, genetics are important, for example, animals in the Highlands need something different, as differences in climate can also affect the meat. It is important to follow a set feeding regime in the last three months of life so that the animals get fat enough.
Vlasta: People from the Czech Fleckvieh Cattle Association have helped us a lot. Once they came to us in Čestr (the Ambiente restaurant, which is under reconstruction) to inform us that they also have a website named Čestr (cestr.cz) and a lot of people were calling them to make reservations for the restaurant. It became a collaboration, because they had an excellent overview of the breeders of Czech Fleckvieh cattle. Thanks to them, more people knew us, we were getting recommendations for quality animals and then we were finding out for ourselves if the selected breeders were willing to supply heifers or steers.
Radek: Because the work with the breeders was nourishing at the beginning. I will never forget my visit to Agro Malinová, where we took live animals for the first time. I went to their chairman in the Rakovník region and explained to him that we needed live bulls for our company. He had seven bulls, so we agreed on two shipments.
The amount was agreed in advance, but when I had the first three animals in the truck, the chairman told me that he was raising the price by three crowns per kilo of live weight for the bulls I wanted to take next time. The whole thing was "take it or leave it". In short, it was the beginnings that taught us a lesson.
How did you divide the tasks amongst yourselves?
Vlasta: I took care of the meat and Radek went to the breeders and got contacts for the company. But besides that, we also had our original jobs. Radek worked in the Ambiente office and was in charge of managing all the chefs, I worked as a chef in Čestr. First we did our own thing and then we went to Jenč. We calmly prepared the steaks at four o'clock in the morning, packed everything up and took it to the pubs before going to work.
How did you learn to work with meat?
Vlasta: We learned a lot in Čestr, we experimented a lot there. Sometimes a relatively large batch of meat had to be thrown away because it didn't turn out well, so of course there were losses. Gradually we fine-tuned our procedures and our meat started to be sold directly in Čestr, some of it went to Lokal Dlouhááá and Pizza Nuova. We also started to discover new cuts, like hanger. We asked Mr Štefunka what it was and he pointed to a pile of meat that was carved from the carcasses and put into the sausages. Nobody could get it here until then, because they cut it right off at the slaughterhouse, and he had a ton of it.
Radek: Štefunka says: "Hey, Marena, pack them six pieces." We cleaned it in Čestr, packed it again, came back a month later, threw it on the grill and found out that it was perfect.
The butcher František Kšána went to New York with you, how did you meet him?
Vlasta: He came to recommend Přeštice Black Pied pork to us. He was very determined, he wanted to promote this breed. So he would go to Mladotice, bring four pig halves from the local slaughterhouse in his own car and offer them to Prague chefs and butchers. It was around the turn of 2011 and 2012, and he told us how these pigs make great sausages and that he would teach us the whole preparation. So we arranged a meeting with Tomáš Karpíšek and invited several chefs. František showed us new things, we liked his meat and the sausages too. And that's when Tomáš had the idea that he could come with us to New York to see what was in it. We liked him, and we said he would help us with pork and sausage making.
Radek: Fand's early days with us were funny and oozed passion for the cause. We rented a school workshop in Navrátilova street in the centre of Prague to make sausages. Among other things, Fanda smoked hams there in a smokehouse that always reported an error and shut down an hour after it started. He used to sleep in the workshop because of this and always switched the smokehouse back on after an hour. One day he came to a meeting completely exhausted, with bags under his eyes, and described the whole anabasis to us. So we had the smokehouse repaired.
Naše maso Butchery was established in 2014. How did it go in the beginning?
Vlasta: We knew from a certain point that we wanted to open a butcher shop. First came the e-shop and then the brick-and-mortar store. Even after the launch, it wasn't without complications, at the beginning there was a bit of a problem with staffing, for example. Not everyone had enough experience and there was no one who could really manage the butcher shop. One more important thing happened in Naše maso. We started to cut and portion the meat in the way the cooks needed it. The butchers had their established procedures, but we knew that many times this was not optimal for culinary purposes.
Radek: The most exciting new thing was opening a butcher shop for Fanda. He went from Amaso to a butcher shop where he could explain to people in person what we actually sell and why our stuff is good. But he didn't want to explicitly run the business, so I took over as boss after a while.
How did you manage to combine your work life with your personal life? From your story, it sounds like you didn't have much free time.
Radek: I mean, Vlasta managed to build a house... and he already has four children.
Vlasta: But I also almost got divorced twice... I was at work a lot, I admit that. We've had more difficult times in the family, and when the children were growing up, I didn't get to enjoy those moments very much. But now I try not to work at least on weekends and generally function as efficiently as possible to be home early.
