Zuzana Kostolna I knew practically nothing about Uruguay. Of course, a distant, small country that does not make much noise, did not have many reasons to be known in its Czech Republic native. He never imagined that it would end up being his home, and where he would end up running a cafeteria in the Arboretum Lussich, in which the preparations she made as a child with her mother and grandmother would be the stars of the menu.
Before Uruguay – or rather, together with Uruguay – came Alexander, her boyfriend. They met at an accommodation during a trip, fell in love, and together they continued to cross borders and visit different corners of the planet. At the end of 2019 they decided to travel to Uruguay, with the intention of visiting Alejandro’s family to spend the year-end holidays with them, and also for Zuzana to get to know the country for the first time.
But of course, that incident appeared called covid-19, and the visit ended up becoming a permanent stay. “It was fate, because I didn’t plan to stay here,” Zuzana told The Observer. When he arrived, he spoke almost no Spanish and did not have a work permit. The need to find a way to survive led her to turn to one of her passions since childhood: pastry.
Although she clarifies that she is an amateur, Zuzana He began to bake his family’s Czech pastry recipes, and offer them on a small table that he set up from Thursday to Sunday on the San Francisco boulevard, near Piriápolis.where his in-laws live.
Zuzana with Alejandro, her boyfriend
The pastry chef began to notice that there were customers who came back every day looking for more products. Every day, without fail, she was there at 5:00 p.m., the time she arrived. One day, she arrived to find a line of 50 people waiting for her and her table. “When I saw it I started crying,” she recalled.
After two years of that routine, the requests for him to cook in larger quantities or to settle in a local were more recurrent. And there, the idea turned into a dream of having a cafeteria, practically became a necessity.
The idea had not come out of nowhere. Already in her traveling stage, Kostolna imagined setting up a cafeteria, but only after she was 50 years old. While she was a globetrotter, she worked in different gastronomic establishments that made her idea mature. “When we were in Piriápolis, that idea began to become more real, and with everything that was happening with the table, I realized that I needed to have a bigger kitchen, to be able to offer coffee with food, to be able to provide better service,” he explained.
A Czech in the Arboretum
The cafeteria in the Arboretum Lussich
With the idea of the cafeteria on the horizon, Zuzana began to save part of her income from what she sold on the Piriápolis boulevard to make it happen. But along the way, he received a call that sped up the process. “You saw that sometimes one thinks so much about things – good or bad – that they end up happening,” he commented.
Those responsible for the reform of the house of the Arboretum Lussich in Punta Ballena knew his kitchen and were customers of the little table. One day they asked him to settle there with a cafeteria, a branch of the management of the place that they did not plan to take over. Zuzana accepted and so, in March 2022, Czech Coffee Shop opened its doorswhich is now in its first summer season since it opened.
During his time in Piriápolis, the table menu changed every day. Although his initial intention was to replicate that experience, the scale of the venue made it difficult to sustain, so from daily changes, the regime became one of letter modifications at each change of season. The only thing that remains, he specifies, is that what will be offered that day is baked every morning.
With this, Zuzana can also appeal to one of the elements she has enjoyed cooking the most since she was a child, experimentation and the constant search for new flavors and recipes, altering the basic preparations. “She did it with my mother, and with my grandmother, who bought me cooking magazines,” she recalled. “Now we use seasonal fruits, and we also change the menu so that it is more in line with the weather”, commented the cook.
The stars of the letter
Among the imported preparations, Zuzana points out that the public’s favorite and the most sold is the czech cakewhich has honey and nuts as its stars.
the czech cake
The other standout are some cognac cream puffsa preparation of his grandmother that he also adapted, and a keto cake (without sugar or carbohydrates) with chocolate, orange, cardamom cream and almond flour.
The cafeteria menu also includes vegan and gluten-free options, “because we want to change that idea that these options are boring,” says Zuzana. “And we have very good breakfasts,” she adds.
Kostolna explains that although the recipes are the ones he inherited from his family, he explains that they are somehow Uruguayanized: “here you can’t get all the ingredients, and there are others that are different, flour for example. But there are others that are actually better, in Uruguay there are very good dairy products, I went to the Czech Republic and started cooking and with the milk and butter there, after using what they have here, I cried”, he compared.
And just as Zuzana brought her Czech recipes to Uruguay, she now also has her favorite local preparations. “Dulce de leche seems incredible to me, although I don’t prepare anything with dulce de leche. I also love the grill, and the tongue with vinaigrette ”, she concludes.
