Prague Food Blog
The best Prague food tips and Prague restaurant guide by Taste of Prague Food Tours. For more insight in Prague food, check out our Prague food tours and our Prague Foodie Map!
Not sure if you’re following us on Instagram or Facebook, but you may have noticed our big announcement: we will be opening Šodó, a bistro in the Dejvice district (which is roughly where we live), with Gabi and Petr, aka PG Foodies, of Etapa. We will be hiring in September, and we hope to welcome you all in our new place some time in November.
We’re sure you’re having questions. Let’s answer some of them.
When we started our Prague Foodie Tours at the top of the Wenceslas Square in Prague’s New Town, showing its historical importance was easy: we’d just whip out our iPad and show photos of people celebrating Czechoslovakia’s independence in 1918, the Nazi troops parading on the square in 1938, the Soviet tanks in 1968, and the Velvet Revolution that ended Communism in late 1989.
Yes, Wenceslas Square, one of Prague’s natural crossroads and a place when the locals meet to venture into the historical centre, where they work and shop (but rarely live) is a place where history was repeatedly made. It has been losing its splendour in the past decades as it lost some high-profile retail shops to Old Town’s Pařížská street and as it became the nearest Prague had to a red light district at night. Think Champs-Élysées, but in Prague.
So the locals may be a bit grumpy about the current state of the square, and look forward to plans of its revitalisation, which - after years of empty promises - seem to be finally picking up speed.
The Wenceslas Square is not just a photo opportunity to capture the monumental National Museum towering at the top of the avenue (year, the „square“ is not really a square), but a great place to spend a day, or a half of it, breathe in the history, have a meal and a drink, and wonder through the webs of walkthroughs that connect the buildings around it. So if you’ve done the Old Town and the Castle District during your Prague trip, the Wenceslas Square is a great place to explore, especially on a rainy day in Prague.
At the end of every year, we write a piece on new openings in Prague. And every year we’re surprised by how many good or decent places actually opened. And boy oh boy, while 2021 sure was a difficult year, we have edited our count down to 50, which means nearly one opening per week. Not too shabby. And this list is by no means exhaustive - it’s just a list of places that have entered our radar and are or are supposed to be good.
And like every year, we’ve made a cheat sheet for you to print out and out it in your wallet or on your fridge, in an attempt to remind yourself that there are still places in Prague you haven’t been. Feel free to scroll down for a download.
Anyway, let’s go down recent memory lane and see what opened in 2021.
So here we go again. When we posted our last post about the covid situation and restrictions in late June, we may have honestly thought it would be the last one: after a slower rollout, vaccines were widely available to anyone who wanted them, our infection numbers were low, and the future was bright.
Well, some five months and one general election later, we entered a pretty brutal fifth wave in November 2021: the number of infections were breaking all previous records, and our hospitals started to fill up with mostly unvaccinated patients.
Right now it seems the peak of this wave is behind us, and the numbers of infections, hospitalisations and Covid-related deaths have been steadily falling, and some of the restrictions have been lifted.
So let’s look at what the situation and restrictions are, how did we get here, and what may be our way forward.
So after last year’s Christmas lockdown, take-out boxes and a whole lotta eggnog, Christmas dining is back in 2021. We’ve been personally eating out on Christmas Eve for years now, for one simple reason: we can’t be bothered. Spending the special day in the kitchen, alternating between swearing and drinking, and then trying to avoid all talk of politics when the in-laws get in (add more wine) and listen to them talk about how „grandma’s potato salad wasn’t done like this“? (Is there any wine left?) Thank you but no, thank you.
Now, eating out on Christmas Eve means a clean kitchen, a visit to a few relatives in their messy homes, a nice dinner and then getting back to your squeaky clean, fragrant-candle-smelling home to give and get presents. And if you’re visiting Prague as a tourist, it’s honestly the only option.
So the new Prague Michelin guide is out, uncharacteristically in the autumn, but hey - anything’s possible in a covid year.
If you follow us for a while, you may know we love to hate the Prague Michelin guide. On one hand, it undeniably helps the businesses included, and you can’t argue with the heritage, but there are some very weak points about it - the writing is average at best (try to read a few to a Prague foodie to see if they recognise the restaurant), the categories are chaotic (whatever Eska serves, „traditional cuisine“ - as suggested by the Michelin guide - ain’t it), the results and the judging are anything but transparent, and the whole guide rarely sails off the beaten path. Read the whole rant here if you care. (It also includes more standard descriptions of the restaurants awarded a star or a Bib Gourmand.)
That said, whenever the French culinary deus ex machina descends on Prague once a year to tell it how it fares culinary-wise (read this sentence again just to get a real feel for how ridiculous this is), it is an event worth noting. So despite all the criticisms, we’re jumping on the bandwagon and comment on the results. So what changed since 2020?
Easy. St Martin’s Day falls on the 11th of November and it celebrates St Martin of Tours, one of the first „non-Martyr saints“, a soldier-turned-Bishop who lived in the 4th Century. There are many legends surrounding his life, but only a few are relevant for us specifically.
Namely, it’s St Martin goose, St Martin rolls, St Martin wines, and St Martin arriving on a white horse.
Traditionally, St Martin is said to be arriving on a white horse, meaning that November 11 tends to coincide with the first snow of the winter season. Well, due to a little thing called climate change, this hasn’t been the case very much lately. Still, St Martin is the day on which you feast on comfort food before the Nativity Fast hits on November 28: there’s a few legends involving geese and St Martin (they either made loud, annoying noises during his sermons, or he hid among geese when they came over to make him a Bishop, and they ratted him out - in any case, they misbehaved and must be punished one way or the other), but the fact is St Martin goose with cabbage or sauerkraut and dumplings is an absolute St Martin’s Day classic, along with sweet rolls filled with either nuts or poppies.
St Martin’s wines are a much newer thing in the Czech Republic, although they do follow some historical logic - St Martin was about the day when winemakers stopped working for the masters who hired them. Marketing-wise, the denomination of St Martin’s wine was introduced as late as in 2005, as a Czech and Moravian response to Beaujolais Nouveau wines. Not all young wine are eligible to be St Martin wines. Only some grapes qualify (the more aromatic whites like Muller Thurgau, Moravian Muscat and Veltliner Frührot, and St Laurent, Blauer Portugieser and Zweigeltrebe for reds and rosés), and allowed residual sugar is capped. All wines that want to bear the denomination must be approved by an independent committee. In 2020, 328 wines by 80 wineries will bear the mark.
We have realised information about the Covid situation and Covid restrictions in the Czech Republic - written in English - is scarce. So we’ve decided we will write a blog post about what is closed in the Czech Republic and what is open, if you can enter the Czech Republic and on what conditions, what are the current Covid and vaccination numbers, and so on. We will be update this on a weekly basis until it is no longer needed. (Which will be hopefully soon.)
Enough chit chat, let’s do this.
With restaurants in Prague open for outdoor dining, and their opening for indoor dining so far uncertain, the hottest question is town right now is where to eat outside. So below are some of our favorites.
Before we get to the list, just two notes:
The odds of your favorite restaurant having outdoor seating are pretty high: restaurants knew they would be allowed to open for outdoor seating first, so they made sure to have at least a few tables open outside. If you’re not sure, pick up the phone and call them.
Wear one extra layer. Not sure about you, but we are finding this year’s „spring“ quite cold.
Anyway, here’s our favorite Prague restaurants with outdoor seating.
A few weeks ago, we posted about our favorite bakeries in Prague specifically for bread. This time around, we will have a look at our favorite bakeries or coffee shops for something sweet.
And boy do we know a thing or two about „something sweet“. If you’ve been following us, you surely know we’re on a never-ending #kolachehunt, and we rarely say no to something sweet along with our coffee. So while our bodies suffer, why can’t you get something out of our… ahem… research?
Three notes about the list: there will be some overlap with the bread list - some bakeries just make delicious bread AND great sweet stuff. Also, please note that we will not be including pastry shops in here - let’s leave that for another post. Finally, we will not be including coffee shops that resell baked stuff from other producers. Everything mentioned in this list is made in house. Enjoy!
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