The restaurants in Prague sure know how to lure the tourists in — offer “traditional” Czech food, and they’ll surely come. The only problem is that Czech food isn’t spectacular to begin with; the food is pretty much medieval (meaning, the food lacks any kind of sophistication and hasn’t evolved in the past 300 years). Yet the tourists, like fools, order the fried meats smothered in standard brown gravy, goulash, sausage and stick-to-your-guts potato dumplings.

It’s hard to believe that Prague is the home to three Michelin star-winning restaurants, when my experiences with non-Czech food was appalling. I ordered a vegetarian pizza, which shockingly came with frozen peas, corn and carrots. An order of buffalo wings was doused in Thai chili sauce (well, good for the Czech for embracing Mae Ploy).

And horror of horrors: an overcooked pasta puttanesca from a decent-looking Italian restaurant (I won’t disclose which one), was sweet, had WAY too many olives in it and arrived with sliced cheese melted on top of it.

But what the Czech do know how to do is street food and desserts. Sausages were ubiquitous. The apple strudel, waffles with chocolate, crepes, poached pears and apples with ice cream, gelato and fried dough rolled in sugar and cinnamon (sorry, I don’t remember the name, but it was something unpronounceable with three consonants) were divine.

I came to Prague with a list of restaurants that I really wanted to eat at, including one of the Michelin award-winning restaurants, some that Martha Stewart had recommended in her March issue, and a vegetarian restaurant called Radost FX that I swore my best friend I would eat at, and ate at absolutely none of them. Instead, I ate at all the touristy shit places, and touristy shit was certainly what I got.