Czech cooking is central European: pork, beef, dumplings, cabbage, cream sauces and paprika, built for a cold climate and physical work. Done well it is very good. Done as a tourist product on the Old Town Square it is grey meat under a heat lamp at four times the price.
The distinction is entirely geographic and it is about four streets wide.
What to eat
Svíčková na smetaně — beef sirloin in a root vegetable cream sauce, with bread dumplings, cranberries and a spoonful of whipped cream. It is the national dish, it sounds wrong, and it is superb when the sauce is made properly.
Vepřo knedlo zelo — roast pork, dumplings and sauerkraut. The other national dish.
Guláš — thicker and less paprika-forward than the Hungarian version, usually beef, served with dumplings or with bread.
Smažený sýr — a slab of Edam, breaded and deep-fried, with tartare sauce and chips. Student food, and a national institution.
Knedlíky — dumplings, and there are two kinds. Houskové are bread dumplings, sliced from a boiled roll, and they exist to absorb sauce. Bramborové are potato. Fruit dumplings with quark and butter are a summer dessert.
Utopenec — a pickled sausage, literally “the drowned man”, eaten with beer.
Nakládaný hermelín — camembert-style cheese marinated in oil with garlic and peppers. The best beer snack in the country.
Trdelník is not Czech. It is sold everywhere in the Old Town as an ancient Prague pastry and it is a recent import marketed at visitors. Eat it if you like; it is a doughnut on a stick.
Where to eat it
Lokál — several branches, a modern take on the Czech pub with proper cooking and tank beer. The most reliable introduction.
Café Savoy in Malá Strana for a grand café breakfast under a neo-Renaissance ceiling.
Kantýna on Politických vězňů — a butcher and canteen where you queue, choose your cut and eat it at a shared table.
Sisters for chlebíčky, the open sandwiches that are a Czech institution.
Vinohrady, Žižkov and Holešovice generally for the modern end — Prague has a strong contemporary restaurant scene that almost no short-stay visitor encounters.
Náplavka farmers’ market on Saturday mornings.
Where not to
Restaurants on or immediately around the Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square, and the ones with photographs of the food outside. They are priced for people who will not return and the cooking reflects it.
Anywhere with a person outside inviting you in.
“Traditional Czech” restaurants in the tourist streets serving pork knuckle on a wooden board with a small flag in it.
Two streets in any direction halves the price and improves the food, which is the same advice as everywhere and is unusually true here.
The bill
Check it. Prague had a serious problem with overcharging visitors and it is much reduced but not gone. Look at the itemised bill, particularly for things you did not order — bread, snacks placed on the table, or an unrequested shot.
Bread and snacks on the table are usually charged. Send them back if you do not want them.
Service is usually not included. Round up or leave around 10 per cent, handed to the waiter — say the total you want to pay rather than leaving money and walking out.
Pay in crowns. Restaurants that quote in euros use a poor rate, and card machines that offer to charge you in your home currency are doing the same thing. Always choose crowns.
Vegetarians
Historically poorly served and now perfectly well served. Traditional menus have smažený sýr and fried cauliflower and not much else, but Prague has a large modern vegetarian and vegan scene, concentrated in Vinohrady, Žižkov and Holešovice.
Coffee and cake
Prague has a serious café tradition — literary cafés of the Austro-Hungarian kind — and a strong modern speciality coffee scene layered on top.
Café Louvre, where Einstein and Kafka both drank. Café Slavia opposite the National Theatre. Grand Café Orient, the only cubist café in the world.
Věnec, medovník and větrník are the cakes to try.
Breakfast
Traditionally not a large meal here — bread, cheese, cold meat, coffee. The grand cafés do a full breakfast and the modern cafés in Vinohrady and Holešovice do the international version.
Chlebíčky — open sandwiches on a slice of baguette with potato salad, ham, egg or fish, sold by the piece in delicatessens — are a genuine Czech institution and the right thing to eat standing up at eleven in the morning.
Portions and pace
Czech portions are large and the food is heavy. A main course with dumplings will defeat most people who have also had a starter.
Lunch is the main meal and is eaten early, from about eleven-thirty. Dinner service in ordinary restaurants starts early too and kitchens close earlier than in southern Europe — nine is late here.
Book anywhere you have specifically read about, particularly Thursday to Saturday. Walk-ins are realistic at lunch.