So with 2022 finally reaching its end, it is time to look back at some of the best Prague openings of the year.

2022 seems to have been a good year - it was the first year without any major covid restrictions that would have an impact on the food industry at large: no shutdowns, no curfews, no capacity restaurant restrictions. And as a food tour company that makes more restaurant reservations than most, let us tell you: people came back and ate like it was the end of the world. This was a busy year if you were a restaurant that had something to offer.

Yet it also seems to be a year without a truly great, game-changing opening - and we mean no disrespect to the fine, hard-working restaurants and venues mentioned below. 2022 was not a year that saw an opening that would redefine what people wanted to eat and drink and experience, you know, the likes of the first Lokál more than a decade ago, or Eska in 2015, or Kro in 2019, or MrHotDog or The Eatery… well, you know what we mean. Great restaurants opened. But the seas did not part.

We are still waiting for some interesting openings next year - Kro will open their Moskevská restaurant after some serious delays. The same people will open Alma in… May? And we’re still waiting for the seismic event that will be the opening of Mr Kašpárek’s new restaurant concept just opposite the Astronomical Clock on the Old Town Square. (We’ve heard some wild things, man.)

Anyway, here’s notable Prague openings of 2022.

We’re back, baby! 

Yes, after two Covid years, the 2022 holiday season finally feels like a real holiday season in Prague - the Christmas markets are on (and not cancelled two hours before their were supposed to start like last year), Prague is full of tourists, and the shopping craze is not hindered by any pesky shutdowns or curfews. Yay?!?

Which also means that if you’re reading this now, frantically trying to find a place to eat out on Christmas Eve, it’s probably too late. But if we were to look for a place to eat out during holidays, it would be one of the ones below. 

So good luck, and here’s our 2022 Prague Christmas and NYE Dining Out Guide.

Bubeneč is a very quiet, green, residential neighbourhood known for embassies occupying large villas, and Stromovka, the biggest park in Prague. This is the district where people settle to start families - it is full of parks, playgrounds and kindergartens, with very few bars or any night life to talk of. It is now na affluent neighbourhood that ticks a lot of boxes - it is near the city centre, but not in it, and while it offers the leaf cover of some fancy districts like Hanspaulka, it does not feel as far away and has everything you’d need.

Now, before we start, we use the term „Bubeneč“ very liberally and do not stick to its precise, administrative borders. So no angry letters please - the are we cover here will inevitably, at times, spill over into Dejvice.

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.

So where do you have St Martin’s goose in Prague? Read on.

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?