Hey there! It’s Thursday, which means another episode of the Taste of Prague podcast, a podcast by Taste of Prague food tours about travel and food in Prague and the rest of the world. And after three episodes about tourism, we finally turn to food: we had the pleasure to interview Vojta Václavík, the chef and owner of the amazing KRO Kitchen. (BTW, if you have been pronouncing KRO in a way that rhymes with “shmoe”, you are wrong. It rhymes with “blue”.)
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Taste of Prague Podcast Ep 4: Vojta Václavík of KRO Kitchen
Now, we’ll admit straight away that we have been huge fans of the little fast food place in the Vinohrady district ever since they opened just a few months ago. Sure, this is fast food, but it ain’t no McDonald’s. The food is super tasty, the produce is sourced from really nice sources (including the farmers market across the street) and the cooking is super smart. KRO Kitchen has been the first place that could go head to head with the cool fast places in bigger cities to the West of Czechia and overseas, and we mean it: deceptively simple, yet made with techniques that could easily find place in the kitchen of a much fancier establishment.
And behind it all is the calm force that is Vojta Václavík. When you think about it, he’s achieved quite a bit given his fairly young age: he worked in such Prague icons as Dahab and Sansho, only to move to Oslo, Norway and work in the Michelin-starred Fauna (now sadly defunct) and then staging in Koka and 28+ in Gothenburg, Sweden. When he came back he took on the uneasy challenge to head the cuisine of the fancy Hergetova Cihelna restaurant. And before all that, he made a small detour and finished university, writing a thesis paper about Eating Habits in the Czech Republic. Not bad for a sweet 17. (Okay, he’s older than that, but you get what I mean.)
Now, saying that Vojta is passionate about his craft would be a cliché that you could say just about any good chef. But Vojta’s passion is different: he’s not a fanboy of some famous chefs - he does have a vision for Czechs to eat better, and he is focused on making sure we all get there. And whether he thinks of it or not in those terms, he cares about sustainability and waste that his business generates.
We recorded the interview in KRO Kitchen during the morning prep, so please excuse the noises in the background, especially in the beginning of the interview, as some technicians were repairing an air duct or something. I could talk with Vojta forever - about his dining experience in Noma, about the cool new projects in Prague, his new kitchen that he is about to open… chatting about all this with the backdrop of the knives hitting the chopping board and breathing in the smells is truly magical. And eating some of the stuff they were preparing after the interview was over was pretty magical too.
Here’s some of the things we talked about with Vojta:
Why did he open KRO Kitchen? Where did the inspiration come from?
Does the final KRO Kitchen differ from the planned restaurant?
Where does he source his produce? Is he happy about the produce he’s working with?
Why do this have a beverage program?
What are the main challenges of opening a restaurant?
How do delivery services and the whole idea of „cooking as a service“ affect his business?
Can chefs today open a restaurant without a front end, just for the delivery services?
Is designing dishes for delivery services differ from designing dishes for a restaurant?
Will he ever open a restaurant?
How much magic happens behind a simple quarter of a rotisserie chicken?
Is it easy to hire for the long run?
Where is Czech cuisine headed?
Has Czech food scene changed much in his career?
How does he feel about food vouchers?
What is his main guilty pleasure?
So here we go: episode 4 of the Taste of Prague Podcast: Interview with Vojta Václavík of KRO Kitchen.
Taste of Prague Podcast Ep 4: Vojta Václavík of KRO Kitchen
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