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!
In the second part of our three-part series of our New York City Food Report, we did make a point of visiting some NYC institutions. We just wanted to benchmark the classics against what we have in Prague. And eat some great food, too. This is where we went. (To see part I, please click here.)
Two Michelin stars. The foundation of David Chang’s status as a chef and empire as a businessman. 13 courses. A bill for two equal to more than one half of the monthly average income in the Czech Republic. Worth it? Would we go again? Yes please!!!
We’re in New York City. We promised ourselves we would come back soon after we left last November. No matter what you may think of it, the city is undeniably cool and you can’t argue with the food and the shops and the people and the sights and all. We love it. So we’re back.
Where other restaurants come and go, Aromi has been a staple on the Prague dining scene. One of the first good Prague restaurants that could be called a "destination dining” place: more than just a mere neighborhood Italian place, Aromi has been attracting successful locals from near and afar despite being located in a residential district far from the areas exposed to mass tourism. It was also the place that gave birth to Riccardo Lucque’s empire of Italian-themed restaurants and bistros. And now, after ten years of its existence, Aromi has moved to a new location, taking over the space left by Sahara Cafe next to the Vinohradské divadlo theatre.
A while ago, we wrote a post about our Prague Foodie Map. So? What’s up with it?
Well, we have an announcement to make. The time has come. The map is ready. As of today, we have it ready for you, and you can find it in a few selected establishments we will reveal as we go.
It’s an extension of our blog. On paper.
It’s funny how times change. A few days ago, a guest of our Prague food tours tweeted, having visited the Prague Coffee Festival, "Prague is becoming one of the world's coffee capitals.” Now, while this may be a bit of an exaggeration, the truth is that we are not longer traveling for great coffee outside of Prague. Oh no. Today, we are coming back to Prague for great coffee.
Cafes in Prague have gone a long way in the past few years. While it was nearly impossible to get filter coffee in Prague a few years ago, today it’s an item that goes without saying. Acidity in coffee has become an accepted characteristic and the variety of styles offered in Prague is quite overwhelming. And while we had to cherry pick and travel for good coffee in Prague, specialty coffee in Prague has today entered just about every Prague’s district, if we discount the outskirts.
What is nice about third-wave coffee in Prague is the lack of attitude and pretentiousness. The community around specialty coffee is inclusive and wants to make friends, with very little foes and enemies within it. The baristas in general don’t have attitude and don’t ridicule the customers for lack of knowledge, instead explaining and helping them navigate Prague’s coffee culture.
This is the third edition of our little Prague Coffee Guide. We’re talking thirty good cafes, up from maybe less than ten some three years ago. We have divided them into three groups for you, depending on how much time are you spending in Prague, and how much coffee you want to drink: "Must-visits", the cafes you should not miss, “Other favorites”, the cafes we like to frequent, and “Other good cafes”, the cafes we visit when we’re in the area.
So, there you have it. What follows is our list of the Best Cafes in Prague.
If you’re arriving in Prague in October and wish to taste some Prague food with Prague locals, you’re in luck. Yup, food events are just THE thing in Prague right now, and if you thought you’d go on a diet after a busy street food summer, Prague’s answer is a resounding NO.
This is a small recap of the most interesting events coming to Prague in October. There’s food, coffee, and we’ve added two events that are not related to food but can build and appetite. And that’s good enough for us. The variety is great: healthy apples, healthy coffee (ahem), some Vietnamese flavors and a "hip hop chip shop" at a sneaker festival, so there’s absolutely no excuse for you not attending. This is where you go.
Yeah. We know. We’d like to know, too.
We have to answer lots of questions during our Prague food tours but some of them are asked more often than others. “Why do they only play old American music in restaurants here? And why is it 80s or 90s music?” Oh, if we had a nickel for every time somebody asked us this question on the tour, we’d have… well, it would be enough to buy a discounted Ace of Base CD for sure.
The truth is that if Prague lags behind other cool cities around the world in something, it’s the soundtracks played in Prague restaurants. Whenever we travel abroad and visit a cool place, that’s the first thing that hits us. Sure, there are exceptions: The Tavern plays a killer soundtrack whenever we come in, and SaSaZu can play some cool tunes on a night (and pretty bad ones on another). Kavárna Místo can find a nice playlist on most of the days. But the rest? It gives you the standing to sue for pain and suffering. At least if you are as sensitive to it as we are.
But it’s high time somebody did something about it, or at least identified the worst crimes against taste and humanity committed in Prague restaurants and cafes. And offered suggestions. That’s what we’ll try to do in this post.
We're on a three-day trip to Copenhagen. Three days? Isn't that too short? We absolutely agree. We're eating our way through it as we write this, so we'll post some pictures before we have some detailed text.
Have a look inside at the gallery so far. The pics include some captions.
You may have heard that Prague has a sizable Vietnamese community, and the plethora of Pho and Banh Mi places, and the convenience stores run by Vietnamese owners, only bear witness to the fact. Due to the shared Communist past and the educational exchanges arranged during these regimes, the influx of Vietnamese students to the Czech Republic has created a healthy community that serves as the basis for new Vietnamese immigration.
What you may not have heard (unless you watched the Prague episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations show) is that Prague is home to Sapa market, a.k.a. “Little Hanoi”, a fairly large warehousing complex on the outskirts of Prague that houses one of the biggest Vietnamese markets outside of Vietnam. A bit of Vietnam in Prague. Is it a must-see? Probably not if you’re in Prague for three days. Not many people travel to our city to have a bowl of Pho or buy cheesy plush toys. But if you’re here for a week, why not? Is the place beautiful? Nope. Is it welcoming? Not if you want to take photos. But is it interesting? OMG yes! On a sunny day, and especially if that day is over the weekend, a visit to Sapa can really feel like a visit to another country, and the market becomes a vibrant place with a friendly atmosphere that stimulates all the senses, good or bad.
Now, making sense of Sapa can be a bit of a challenge. The place is very busy with vans and cars unloading and loading goods, and shops with big signs luring you in. To an untrained eye or to a first-time visitor, Sapa can be quite confusing, and it is hard to pick the good places to eat or drink. That is why we have asked four people who have detailed knowledge and run tours of the Sapa market to share their secret tips for their must-eats in Prague’s Vietnamese market. This is who they are and what they wrote.
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