VEG

The restaurant & setting. Martin Novák arrives in snowy Poprad and hits the first problem straight away: when he asks passers-by on the street about the vegetarian restaurant VEG, nobody has ever heard of it. „Poprad seems very meat-eating," he concludes. He finally finds the place down in a basement on Námestie Svätého Egídia. VEG, whose name comes simply from the word vegetarian, has been open for six years, but it is a dark, gloomy cellar with no daylight.

The people. The owner is thirty-year-old Denis Malinič, a committed vegetarian since early childhood, who opened the restaurant at twenty-four with no experience whatsoever in gastronomy. He used to work in IT, but he feels better at the stove than at a computer. The cook is Danka, an older woman who came to gastronomy through her daughter's restaurant (which has since gone under). Lunches are plated and delivered by Matúš, with Filip also on deliveries. Denis is a vegetarian himself, while Matúš is, by contrast, a „meat-eater".

Why they called Martin. Denis has been struggling for a long time. „It is getting worse and worse," he admits. He has gradually dropped down to only a lunch menu and no longer offers an à la carte list. A high energy bill of around 9,500 euros, debt repayments still dating from covid, and unpaid rent have put him into the red, which he himself estimates at roughly 75,000 euros. He does not want to close; he believes it can be saved.

The first visit. Martin orders the entire lunch menu at once. The soups are a disaster: „It looks like water from a washing machine, and it tastes that way too," and the dumplings in it are, he says, like eating sand. A gratin of frozen broccoli with blended potatoes and old cheese gets zero points, and the Indian bhaji is fried so poorly that the dough and flour inside are still raw. The one bright spot is a fresh, colourful samosa with mango dip: „This is how I imagine vegetarian food, fresh, lively, playing with colours." Martin cannot understand how the same kitchen can produce both this and that.

The diagnosis. The root of the problem is not just the food but the energy. Martin tells Denis he is submissive, that he has lost his spark and that he himself is the anchor dragging the business down. „You are supposed to be the energy you give to people." Danka too is visibly broken, alone, with her children in Austria and Iceland, and her sadness, according to Martin, carries right onto the plate. The whole basement restaurant feels depressing. The most important task goes to Denis: to find the answers and reignite his own spark.

The reset. Martin takes Denis on a trip to the Tatras to get out of that „dark hole" and recharge. Through interviews he looks for a waitress so that Denis can act as manager or stay in the kitchen. As a gift, he treats Danka and her friend Saša to a skincare session at an aesthetic clinic so they come to the big night full of energy. The biggest change is the space itself: all night long excavators and trucks worked at the cellar to fit windows with a view of the Tatras. A new logo was added, and the whole place came alive.

New concept & menu. The vision is to move VEG towards à la carte and appeal to the meat-eating majority, without Denis abandoning his vegetarian philosophy. The new menu is colourful and modern: roasted young carrot with carrot-top pesto, buckwheat popcorn and pecan, a roasted beetroot soup with cabbage and a sweet-potato soup, lentil ragout with vegetarian demi-glace, krúpoto from fermented barley, spinach gnocchi with basil pesto and burrata, carrot cake and chocolate espuma with orange peel. Denis pleasantly surprises Martin.

The big night. The dinner descends into chaos. The staff have no system, cooks roam the floor, waiters get tangled up in the kitchen. The tea they were supposed to prepare for five hours is not ready, and guests freeze in a queue outside. Matúš drinks alcohol behind the bar during service, which infuriates Martin: „A doctor goes to operate on someone's brain, does he have just one and that is it?" The waitress takes the tables in the wrong order, one at a time and then waits, so people sit for an hour without food, and even Denis's mother goes a long time without so much as a glass of water. The gnocchi come out underseasoned and floury, the krúpoto too salty, and the guests leave them on the plate. The soups, however, are praised, and Danka holds the kitchen firmly in hand like a head chef.

One month later. A month later Martin returns with some apprehension and barely recognises the restaurant. The black cellar has become a lively, bright space that Denis rebuilt himself on a low budget. The vegetable broth is now excellent, fragrant with lovage, and instead of washing-machine water it has real flavour. Not everything is perfect: the polenta gratin and the colourful wrap are, according to Martin, underseasoned and lacking salt. The cook also sends out a cream puff, which turned out well.

Verdict: Denis and his team have taken a big step forward, the restaurant breathes with a completely different energy again, and Martin awards them 3 knives, which he says are mainly for Denis having reignited the fire within himself.