So you've been to Prague before and now are planning a repeated visit to the city, but you're wondering what's changed since Covid? You are in the right place – this is the best 10 places in Prague that open since Covid. Hooray for listicles!!!
These are presented in no particular order, and while a surprising number of new businesses opened in Prague since the pandemic, we think these are the ones that you should visit. Here’s the list.
Kus koláče
Vinohrady’s Kus koláče is one of Covid’s undisputed winners: a bakery where nearly everything gets smothered in a mixture of melted butter and rum before serving? What more did you need during the lockdowns of 2020? No, really, there aren’t many things to eat more Czech than kolache (sorry, Texas, but jalapeño sausage kolache is just plain wrong), and Kus koláče clearly makes some of the best in town. The secret? As Nika, the founder admits, they don’t pretend to make it healthy.
And locals love it, as witnessed by some epic lines, especially on a Saturday morning. The bakery even publishes when new batches will be ready, so that you can come and form a line at the right time. This is not just about kolache, though: Kus koláče serves other sweet things, and the newly opened Další kus next door is a modern take on a classic Czech deli (think pigs in blankets and deli salads). You know how you love these little businesses in Asia that just focus on one thing and do it really well and become very popular? That’s Kus koláče in Prague. A must go.
Dian
Everything that Brothers Ta touch turns to gold, or at least it seems like it: first Gao Den on the outskirts, which quickly became a local favourite for modern Vietnamese food, followed by Taro, a bar-seating, set-menu-only restaurant which is now mentioned in the Prague selection by the Michelin guide, and now Dian, a restaurant that satisfies the office rats in the Brumlovka office park for lunches, only to become a destination dining place for dinner.
Dian is a Vietnamese-inspired restaurant with a concept that relies on dishes to be shared: the place is the funnest if you go in a bigger group and just order everything. It is an ambitious but successful project: the restaurant is huge, the menu pretty big, and the sommeliers have picked some interesting natural and conventional wines to boot. (And cocktails can be had here, too.) This comes closes to the brothers’ initial dream of opening something in the vein of The Slanted Door in San Francisco. The place is stylish, and the Uber drive will reward you with a very local experience - this is far from the madding crowds in the touristy centre.
Winegeek
Speaking of natural wines, Marko Jelic, aka Winegeek, became the „lockdown hero“ when he embraced the changed landscape and started offering nearly instant home deliveries of natural wine during lockdowns - and how much we needed them! Marko is a guy that ties the natural wine room together here in Prague: he knows nearly everyone and delivers wine to pretty much all the good restaurants that serve natural wine in Prague. He is also a member of Družstvo, a group of young somms that throw pretty epic wine parties in interesting places around town. (Check them out online - maybe they thrown one out when you’re in town.)
His shop at the foot of the Letná hill is a pure joy to visit: sure, it’s more of a shop than a wine bar (no food, sorry!), but you can definitely get yourself a tasting through the portfolio… and a nice chat with Marko, Dragan, his right-hand man, or any other of their colleagues. It is also worth checking out if they happen to organise a tasting of any of their winemakers during your stay - the best way to meet a winemaker from Moravia, Slovakia or Austria without making the necessary trip. Great stuff.
Liquid Office
We often write about the Karlín district, the post-industrial, gentrified, IT-infused island of cool just East of the city centre, and for good reason: it has great food, great coffee, and cool beer and wine places, but it always lacked a good cocktail bar. Enter Liquid Office that was born from the ashes of the Cash Only Bar, a popular smaller sister of the iconic Hemingway Bar that fell victim to the lockdowns and curfews of the Covid years. Now the people behind it opened a cocktail bar in one of Karlín’s new office buildings, using the same approaches (and furniture) that used to make Cash Only Bar that great.
And it works. The bar did not sell out to the office crowds by offering the usual suspects like mojitos or piña colada (although they do offer a fun take on the latter in the summer), instead still relying on classic cocktails of an old-fashioned cocktail bar, adding coffee and some light food during the day. We love their signature drink, the Butterfly (named after the office building), and the outdoor seating at the end of a calm street with limited traffic. A great finish after a dinner at Eska, or any other occasion in Karlín.
U Kalendů
First, a confession: Jan has every reason to hate the remodelled U Kalendů pub - he and his high school buddies would go to the old pub on the first day of spring every year to drink all day as part of their high school ritual (they would open specifically for us at 6am, and we’d collectively jump into the river at noon), so this new, gentrified, refined and more expensive rethinking of this classic riverside pub by the ubiquitous Ambiente group that made an end to the tradition should make us angry.
But it’s difficult to get angry at U Kalendů. It’s just so damn good. Chef Všetečka, former Creative Chef at the Ambiente group, has created a concept that takes an approach similar to London’s St John’s: traditional pub dishes at their simplest form, done very well. If you like innards, this is your place: the pork tongue with carrots is to die for, and the pig ears or tripe dishes have been Chef Všetečka’s signatures for ages. Given the proximity of the river, fish is also on the menu. Add fresh Pilsners and a surprisingly great bakery, and you get one of the best pubs in town. Simple as that. If you’re visiting the Vyšehrad fortress and not eat here, we can’t be friends.
Kro Bistro & Bar
Not like Karlín needed another great place to eat, but it’s still nice it got one. Kro Bistro & Bar is where two Prague scenes - traditionally separate - finally meet: great eating, and great cocktails. While the combination works for us, it still needs some getting used to by the locals, and the cocktail side of things is a bit streamlined for now, mostly consisting of a few signature cocktails that are definitely worth a try. (You can also get craft beer on tap and local natural wines.)
The food side is the good old Kro that people have learnt to love in the original location in Vinohrady, opened in 2019. It’s cheffy fast food built around rotisserie chicken with techniques more at home at some modern fancy restaurants, with fresh takes on Czech classics (especially the pulled beef dishes tend to have a traditional Czech sauce with them), and a bigger focus on vegetables. If you want to see where younger spoiled Czechs love to eat, add Kro B&B to your list.
Le Terroir
Now, a traditional French place with super traditional French wines by a conservative sommelier that looks at local natural wines as something that lacks „about two hundred years of tradition“ (his own words) and that attracts what seem to be middle-aged white men seeking a place where „the world hasn’t got mad and woke“ is not something we’d look for. (Despite the fact that the original Le Terroir, a restaurant run by the same sommelier years ago, was the place that Jan invited Zuzi for their first date… and she declined.)
But you know what? Le Terroir is absolutely fantastic. The wines are great. The food is simple but precisely made. The tables on the street are cosy and airy, and the interiors (inherited from Home Kitchen that used to occupy this space before) are nice, too. And did we mention great, conservative French wines? Spending an afternoon here is too easy.