EU serves up new rules

At a popular Prague beer pub, Vlado, a wiry waiter and pub manager, shouts out drink orders while frantically serving up plates of goulash, pork and potatoes that he says were cooked in accordance with a new set of European Union food safety standards. Several blocks away, an American restaurant owner tells a similar tale of how EU-related changes in food handling and preparation have required restaurants to implement such items as touchless faucets, new refrigerators and time limits for serving prepared dishes. But despite having more than two years to make the requisite safety changes, restaurants in the center of Prague continue to be the exception to the rule, according to trade groups and restaurant workers. Although no hard figures exist for how just how many kitchens have been brought up to EU code, Vaclav Dort, from the Association of Entrepreneurs in Travel and Hospitality, estimates that only 10 percent of the country's restaurants have made the required changes. While implementing the law would mean a financial burden that many restaurants are just not able or willing to carry out, the EU-mandated changes also pit safety standards against time-honored tradition, particularly in the popular area of prepared food such as goulash. Under the new rules, goulash and other prepared dishes cannot be served after three hours.