As a guest of our yesterday’s food tour said, May is a great time to visit Prague: the trees are blossoming, the weather is great and everything is green. But it’s not just the nature that wakes up after a half-year hiatus. The social life seems to start blossoming in May, too, and with a few interesting events taking place mid to late May, you can tap into that scene, too. We bring you a short last-minute overview of the events coming up the next week, the associated venues, and - of course - the eateries nearby. Because let’s be honest: it’s all nice and all to look at buildings, design or listening to music, but when you’re hungry, you’re hungry, okay?

As we like to say, research is the hardest part of our job. We have to visit new places when they open to see if we can recommend them or whether they are so good that we can actually steer our Prague food tours in an entirely new directions. Yes, we know, a truly horrible plight, but somebody has to do it. Now, to give you the fruit of our pain and suffering, we will - from time to time - post short notes on the places we have visited recently. These will be our opinions based on only one or two visits of fairly recently opened venues so they cannot be seen as full-fledged reviews. That said, let's start with three today.

OK, let’s face it. The Ice-Hockey World Championships are really a Tier II championship. It’s a tournament of the best ice-hockey players who play for teams that got kicked out of the Stanley Cup playoffs already. Also, early and mid May is not the time of the year you would associate with ice-hockey - or ice for that matter - but let’s not worry about that. The hockey is still good and the Czechs love the tournament, and this year it is held in Prague and Ostrava, Czech Republic! 

Where should you watch the games? How should you behave? What to look for? Where to eat? Read on.

When Jan was small, he and his father used to visit the old Hamburk pub for Sunday lunches. It was not a beautiful place back then but then again, no pubs looked really that great in the 1980s under Communist rule. But Jan loved the maritime styling of the pub (referring, along with the pub’s name, to the fact that there was a river port with a direct connection to Hamburg nearby), with a big ship’s wheel under the ceiling as the main light in the room. It was a classic neighborhood pub with “regulars” hanging around the bar. A classic local pub of the Karlin district, a district with a “black soul”, the only “bad neighborhood” in town, a blue-collar worker, industrial neighborhood and a place when Jan’s father used to live.

We love the Dish Fine Burger Bistro, and we visit on the spur of the moment whenever we want to treat ourselves to a great, tasty, juicy burger. You know, the kind of burger that will make you want to cancel your dinner reservations for the month ahead and just come back again and again for seconds and thirds. We never have a reservation so our visits follow the same pattern. We come in, the staff looks at us with that didn’t-we-tell-you-like-the-past-twenty-times-you-should-make-a-reservation-before-you-come kind of face, and then we ģo for a walk around the block because the next table will hopefully be ready in 20 minutes but maybe later, too. Who knows.

We make a point of having a glass of wine on our tours. We have figured you will have the beer anyway. It’s cheaper than tap water in many restaurants here, and it’s so ubiquitous we would not believe you if you said you did not have one in Prague. But wines? No. Czech wine production is tiny and exports are rare, so most foreign visitors do not associate Prague with wine.

Well, we think that’s a mistake and that’s why we are trying hard to change that perception. Luckily, we are not alone. Far from it. There are other people in Prague working hard on the same thing. Take the good people of Veltlin, the wonderful local wine bar in the heart of the Karlin district. Mr Bogdan Trojak and his colleagues have long focused on the “natural” wines of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. (You can see the Empire painted on the wall that dominates the bar.) 

The very same people have decided this year to organize the second installment of Prague Drinks Wine, a festival of natural wines from the former empire in Prague, to be held on 6 and 7 June. The festival tries to follow on the long-forgotten tradition of meetings of Empire winemakers held before WWI. The festival will host about 50 Central European winemakers offering about 400 samples of wine. 

Believe it or not, we used to be students, too. And just like any students, even we had tight budgets. Zuzi, for instance, saved some money by hitchhiking to and from Prague for university. Jan spent ten years doing his masters degree simply because he worked throughout his studies to make some money on the side (oh, and also because he was pretty lazy… and drafted, but that’s another story). But that does not mean we did not care about what we ate. We always liked good food, but simply did not have the money for fine dining.

We know that many visitors who want to eat their way through Prague are on a budget. While we do sometimes visit fine dining venues on our own travels, we think you do not have to compromise on quality even if you have a budget that is slightly tighter. And many times going for the budget option actually brings you the local immersion travelers crave whenever they go. Because we want you to eat well in Prague even if you do not have a gold credit card, we bring you some tips for eating Prague on a budget.

Let’s get the disclaimer out of the way at the beginning: visiting Prague for one day only is not, ehm, the ideal scenario. Prague has so much to offer that you will definitely wish you’d stay longer. You’ll see. That said, we are well aware that we get far less vacation time than we all deserve, and sometimes you want to try to see as much as possible. 

Inspired by guests who have recently stayed in our rental apartment, we have prepared an emergency, one-day, try-to-see-it-all-in itinerary for Prague. Setting up an itinerary like this is about compromises. But we have tried our best to create an itinerary that will mix the local with the famous, and throw in some great bites on the way, of course. Just remember: Prague is a bit hilly and the streets are cobblestoned, so wear comfortable shoes and prepare mentally for a long walk. You’re in for a looong walk, but hey: you brought it on yourself. Visiting Prague in one day? Crazy.

OK, so we run the food tours here in Prague and all, but clearly, we are not the only foodies living in Prague. In fact, what makes the Prague food scene so exciting is not only the restaurants, delis, bars, cafes and shops opening every year, but it is the community that has been building around food and the dining scene here in Prague and that has been raising the expectations people have of good food.

There is a new generation of foodies now eating their way through Prague: people who travel for food, are in the know about global trends, can put what happens in Prague into a broader context and demand a bit more than what was “good enough” ten years ago. And because this site, and the entire Taste of Prague project, is about sharing experience with our fellow foodie travelers, we asked a few of our foodie friends or people we respect as foodies for their tips in Prague. Where do they go to eat? This is what they said.

Life is great when you don’t have any food allergies. When you are gluten intolerant, things have not been so rosy here in Prague. Typical Czech cuisine does use gluten rather than not, and choices have been limited. That said, things have been getting better even in the gluten-free food department. We have decided to set up a small guide of Prague for people with gluten intolerance. We have picked some places that are good in their own right but are also good options for celiacs. We have tried to avoid places that offer one gluten-free dish, instead opting for eateries that offer more variety even for a diner with gluten intolerance.