Before settling here six months ago, Lorieux worked kitchens all over Europe, from Norway to Switzerland to his native France. But life is different in the Czech Republic.

"Prague is a very weird place to cook," he declares.

For starters, Lorieux says, the local population has yet to learn the intricacies of fine dining or the sometimes-bizarre juxtapositions of fusion cuisine. So high-end restaurants must rely on foreign visitors and expats. And the limited number of suppliers forces chefs to plan further in advance for seafood or other scarce products.

Then there's the long procession of mediocre (or worse) places emphasizing price over all other considerations. Finally, there's another phenomenon, not really unique to Prague, but very common here: the rapid demise of once-decent establishments.

Why do restaurants find it so difficult to maintain consistency? "Some people say to themselves, 'Oh, it's working well,' so they lay back," Lorieux says. Well-regarded chefs or owners with a so-called magic touch start to coast once they've done the initial hard work.

"Complacency is a problem in any line of work, and life in general," agrees Andrew Rea, owner of Fraktal. "And a lot of people believe the accolades they read about themselves."

Countering this attitude requires constant, unrelenting effort. "It's important that the staff see what we're doing," explains Richard Fuchs, who works alongside Vito Mollica at Allegro in the Four Seasons Hotel. "If we take care of small details and don't compromise, they won't."

Some problems are common in restaurants around the world. Failure to find the right balance between cost and quality, for one, can tilt margins into the red or drive customers away (if, for example, management decides to rely on rock-bottom ingredients without cutting prices). Rea finds himself struggling with the equation at times, particularly when he considers the bill for, say, eggplant hidden in Fraktal's quesadillas.

"Does anybody notice [the presence of eggplant]?" he wonders to himself. "If you're only out to make money, you ask the question, 'How cheap do we make it?' "

The problem, chefs claim, is that too many restaurants in Prague answer that question the wrong way. This feeds the carelessness of suppliers, such as the company that tried (and failed) to force dead lobsters on La Provence. "They can just sell them to another restaurant," Lorieux complains. He uses only about 10 percent of some greens delivered by his suppliers, tossing the rest.

Czech culture offers up some additional, peculiar stumbling blocks. "There's not the same ambition among line cooks," Lorieux suggests. "They don't want to move up. They're happy with the job." As a result, chefs battle against a natural complacency, almost inherent among kitchen and wait staff. Internal combativeness, the desire to reach for the sous chef position or a head waiter slot, to move up on the line, the willingness to stick around after hours just to stand out from your peers — it's a rare instinct here, according to several chefs.

"You have to explain every time you have something new [in the kitchen]," Fuchs points out. "We have to set good examples every minute, every second, every day."

Chefs say they also find it necessary to provide basic culinary instruction. "The hardest part is introducing new flavors and getting them to understand," says Carlo Bernardini, consulting chef with Bellevue and V Zátiší. "They've never tasted bonito flakes"— he puts his fingers to his mouth and grimaces, mimicking unhappy line cooks — "they don't know how to use these ingredients, so you must teach them."

Apart from the usual challenges, then, maintaining consistency in Prague demands constant training, close scrutiny of products entering the kitchen and a willingness to adjust to a more ground-floor level of knowledge (Lorieux laughs as he recalls pulling out beef for staff meals and the line cooks automatically preparing goulash). If chefs overlook something or take a few days off while still uncertain of a staff's reliability, the inevitable slide begins.

That's why Lorieux enjoys little breaks between lunch rush and the onslaught of dinner. He leans back, watches smoke drift from another cigarette and shakes his head.