The chief of the Old Guard of Chefs: Czech cuisine from socialism to the present
You said you originally wanted to study to be a pastry chef. What got in the way?
The fifties got in the way. I went into apprenticeships in the year fifty-seven, and at that time there was a tendency to send men into engineering, into steelworks and mines. I wanted to be a confectioner, but in the whole of Prague they only took girls for this field. So I started looking for a place to train as a cook. I got a job in the kitchen of a restaurant in the Slavic House.
What attracted you to the pastry trade?
I liked to help out at home, baking cakes, bundt cakes. Then when I couldn't train as a pastry chef, I tried cooking without any particular interest, that came later. But the environment seemed nice and I felt good at work, I liked to learn. But I did get into pastry after all. In 1967-70, I worked as a chef at the ROH Na Bílém kříž (White Cross) convalescent home in the Beskydy Mountains. When my pastry chef left, I started to prepare desserts. The convalescent home was in the mountains, so in winter I had to take over the bakery. I baked rolls and buns, getting up at three o'clock in the morning so that the holidaymakers could have them baked for breakfast. It was a challenge, but they were wonderful years.
Why didn't they let boys study pastry back then?
The government of the time was trying to liquidate the hospitality industry, guys didn't belong in it according to Presidents Zapotocky and Novotny, they belonged in the engineering industry. Nobody realised then that the culinary industry had a great history in our country since the time of the First Republic, when the Old Guard of Cooks was founded: The Old Guard of Cooks was founded in 1903).
How long have you been cooking at the Slavic House?
Only while I was teaching. I remember there was a lot of rivalry between the Municipal House and the Slavic House. Who was better, who could do more. And yet my final exams were held at the Municipal House, and I even passed them on a coal stove. After my apprenticeship I went to RaJ 9 and since then I have been working as an independent chef on the premises: Under RaJ - Restaurants and Canteens - were catering establishments; in Prague, each of the ten city districts had its own RaJ, which was part of a national enterprise.) I also worked at Konibar on Harp, which was a restaurant that cooked only horse meat. I had my eyes in the back of my head when I got there, but I ended up liking it. But I didn't stay there long. It was customary within the RaJs that the cook had to go wherever he was needed. So I was transferred on until I ended up at the restaurant U Brázdů and from there I went straight to the army.
What obstacles did cooks face under the previous regime? How did you get access to, say, more premium ingredients?
Premium ingredients were only in international hotels. There were four price groups: a choice one, then a two, a three and a four. One and two had access to more premium ingredients, and the hotels did too. The restaurants where I worked and where it was crowded, including the Slavic House, where over two thousand lunches and three thousand dinners were cooked, were given different ingredients. The cooks in such establishments must have been hard workers.
How did it feel?
It was frustrating when food was not prepared with the right ingredients. In every other place, for example, they used to make "chinese". It wasn't good, I'm against it. If I don't have the ingredients, I don't do it. Or at least call the food something else. You don't make a candle out of kangaroo.
And how did the situation change for you after the revolution? Did freedom manifest itself in the kitchen?
People started saying that standards should be abolished. But no chef cooked according to standards. But you have to understand the difference between a standard and a recipe.
So what is a standard?
If I follow a standard, it means that I must not break anything - this is commonly practiced by pastry chefs. Nowadays, I'm also a pastry chef, so I know that if I add less or more of an ingredient to the dough, I'll spoil it. It's like working with cement.
And the recipe?
Recipes can change, and that's happened in every restaurant. New recipes were invented that often didn't match the restaurant's previous diet. But there was one thing I regretted after the revolution. Suddenly, everyone wanted to have a pub, get rich and within a year get a villa in Hawaii. The way I had it set up, we cooked for people, for guests. If we weren't good cooks, we wouldn't have a business and the pub would be empty. On the other hand, it's nice to see especially family-run businesses where they are fully committed to the restaurant and the guests. The result is immediately different.
What was the quality of the food on offer after 1989?
Shortly after the revolution, the quality was still poor under the influence of the standards, individual RaJ and Jednota were still operating. But I would also like to praise the standards, because we can still find useful technological procedures in them today. Thanks to the standards, we also learned how to calculate how much a particular meal should cost. That is also important. Nowadays, chefs are already elsewhere with technology and ingredients, and thanks to this, we Old Guard chefs can continue to learn. We're learning about new ingredients and how to work with them.
In two of the three cookbooks you've published, you focus on rabbit meat. Is that a traditional ingredient for us Czechs, then Czechoslovaks?
It is. Rabbit meat was written shortly after 1989, because there was no cookbook on the market then. I like rabbit meat very much, I used to go to Moravia and it was always rabbit that was served there. That is why the recipes in my cookbooks are often inspired by Moravia and Wallachia. I believe that if the cook likes it, everyone should like it.
Is that how you know a good cook?
Yes. In the kitchen, I always looked at the plates that came back. When they came back with the food, there was a mistake somewhere. So I'd taste the food again, and usually it still needed some tweaking.
You're the recipient of a number of culinary and social awards. What specifically has Charter 77 recognised you for?
I got an honourable mention from them and we also won the Best Club in the Czech Republic award as the Old Guard of Chefs, once it was even first place, I'm very happy about that. (Ed. note: In 2020). For our work, for what we do as the Old Guard, which I founded or renewed in 2006. We will soon celebrate twenty years of existence.
The Old Guard
The Old Guard of Cooks and Pastry Chefs was revived in 2006 by Jiří Eichner and its activities were a continuation of the pre-war Old Guard, which was disbanded after the communists took power. It is part of the Association of Cooks and Confectioners of the Czech Republic and, unlike the original one, it also recruits confectioners to its ranks. It is currently made up of about fifty chefs and pastry chefs aged 75-95 who are still actively cultivating their craft. Today, however, they no longer work in restaurants, but are dedicated to education and celebrating Czech cuisine.
And what do you do?
First of all, we meet, that was my main task. I thought at the time that chefs should meet and talk. Apart from that, we go on tours, we go exploring different restaurants and hotels, we go to about two in Prague every year. We recently visited the Senate, it was interesting to see another piece of history. We also share recipes with each other, and our team goes to SeneCura retirement homes to show the seniors examples of healthy meals. We bring them books and menus, we talk to them and it's extremely nice. For us and I think for them too.
What ingredients do you show them?
Especially the health food ones. There are so many ingredients today that seniors sometimes don't know that buckwheat or hemp seed are good for their health. I've been focusing a lot on hemp seed lately, I've been working with buckwheat for a good twenty years.
What made you think that seniors in particular would appreciate help with their diet?
It depends on where they live. In homes for the elderly, there's a lot of aspects that go into eating. If vegetables and fruit are expensive, then the seniors in the home simply cannot afford them; financially, they often cannot fit in such meals. The same applies to school canteens. I have noticed that they often serve children something they do not want and then the food is thrown away, which is unnecessary. If they want to give them fish for lunch, the schools should first ask what kind of fish the children like, in what preparation, and then serve it to them.
Jiří Eichner
The chief of the Old Guard, Jiří Eichner, trained at the Slavic House. Originally he wanted to be a pastry chef, but only girls were accepted for this profession at that time, so he started to work as a cook. In 2003, he re-founded the Old Guard and is still the head of it today. He is the holder of several awards - he received an honorary recognition of the Charter 77, the highest culinary award in the Czech Republic, the Cross of St. Lawrence and also the gold, silver and bronze medal of Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová. Mr. Eichner is a walking library, collecting cookbooks and cookbooks since 1970. Today he has more than 2,000 of them and seems to carry them all in his head. Among his favourites are The Old Bohemian Art of Cooking or Dictionary of the Art of Cooking. He has also published three cookbooks himself: 100 and 1 Rabbit Meat Delicacies, Rabbit Feast a The Big Book of Cooking.
Do you also cook for the public? And what specifically are you planning at UM?
We started working with UM relatively recently. We prepare recipes based on old basics so that younger colleagues can see how it used to be done. We have cooked for the public, for example in Olomouc at the Olima Cup gastronomic event, and we used to organise the Chefs' Day in Prague. Usually we prepare more small snacks, but we cook in bigger ones, mainly in senior homes.
What cookbooks do you get those old recipes from?
I have about two thousand cookbooks, newspapers and cooking magazines at home, also menus. I choose old recipes - like today: There was a pop-up Old Guard cook-off at UM for the invited Ambiente chefs.), I have old books with me, according to which I wrote the recipe for the courses - so that the cooks here at UM don't think I made it up (laughs). I also find ancient names of dishes and ingredients. I wanted to show my younger colleagues at UM what they called tripe in old Czech cuisine.
How?
Chámy. We find them in cookbooks from the nineteenth, sometimes even the twentieth century. And more and more names. The oldest cookbook I have was published in 1806. When I was studying it, I used to go to the Memorial of National Literature, in those days in Strahov, and learn shabach so that I could understand some of the terms.
In your opinion, is gastronomy in the Czech Republic heading in the right direction today?
You could say that it does - as a whole. I just say that fish should be fresh, not imported from the sea. We are a Central European country, we have our own ingredients and our body is used to them and knows how to use them. But of course, everyone may see it differently. I like to taste anything, but I don't have to have everything.
