Best Czech Restaurants Around the World

The best-scored czech place in each of 4 cities.

Regional variations

Bohemia (Prague, Plzen, the west)

The pilsner heartland. Roast pork with knedliky, svickova, Czech-style goulash with bread dumplings, utopenci, smazak (fried cheese), bramboraky. The defining Czech tavern cooking. Prague's old-town hospody and Plzen's brewery restaurants are the lineage rooms.

Moravia (Brno, the east)

Wine country, lighter cooking. Moravian sparrows (vepřové ze zadního), slow-roasted pork in caraway with bread dumplings, vegetable sauerkraut, Moravian-style goulash. Slivovice (plum brandy) and Moravian Riesling, Pinot Blanc, and Pinot Gris.

Silesia and the north

Polish-influenced cooking with more potato dumplings (less bread dumplings), more sauerkraut variations, and a deeper game tradition from the Bohemian forests. Boar and venison are regional specialties.

Defining czech dishes

Veprzo-Knedlo-Zelo

Roast pork shoulder (vepro), bread or potato dumplings (knedlo), and stewed sauerkraut (zelo). The national dish. The pork is roasted in caraway and garlic with crackling skin, the dumplings cut from a steamed loaf with thread, and the sauerkraut braised with bacon and onion.

Svickova

Beef sirloin slow-braised in a root-vegetable mirepoix (carrot, parsnip, celeriac, onion), the strained vegetables pureed back into a cream sauce, served with bread dumplings, cranberry jam, whipped cream, and a lemon slice. The Sunday dish.

Czech Goulash

Thicker than Hungarian gulyas, more like the Austrian stew tradition: cubed beef in a paprika-and-onion gravy, served with bread dumplings (houskovy knedlik). A different dish from its Hungarian namesake despite the shared word.

Knedliky (Bread Dumplings)

Steamed dumpling loaf made from yeast dough with cubes of stale bread, cut into 1-cm slices with thread (not a knife). The universal Czech starch with braised meats and sauce; cut wedges soak up gravy.

Roast Duck with Red Cabbage

Whole duck roasted slowly until the skin is crisp, served with sweet-and-sour red cabbage cooked with apple and caraway, plus both bread dumplings and potato dumplings. The Sunday and festive dish.

Smazeny Syr (Smazak)

Breaded and deep-fried slab of Edam-style cheese, served with tartare sauce and bread or fries. The country's defining beer-friendly snack, found at every hospoda.

Utopenci

Pickled sausages (literally drowned-men), the local pork sausage pickled in vinegar brine with onion, peppercorn, and bay leaf. Eaten cold with bread and beer.

Nakladany Hermelin

Pickled Camembert-style cheese in oil with paprika, onion, garlic, and peppercorn, served cold with rye bread. A classic tavern starter.

Kulajda

A creamy dill-and-mushroom soup with potato, sour cream, and a poached egg. Bohemian comfort food, especially in summer when wild dill and forest mushrooms are abundant.

Bramboracky

Czech-style potato pancakes seasoned with garlic, marjoram, and caraway, pan-fried. Eaten as a side, a snack, or a main with sauerkraut.

How to order

At a Czech hospoda (tavern), order a pilsner first; it usually shows up automatically. Order a starter (utopenci, smazak, or nakladany hermelin), then a main with knedliky. Portions are large; expect 600 to 800 grams of protein. The standard Czech meal pattern is starter, then main, then maybe a small sweet (palacinky, the thin pancakes with jam and quark). Tip 10 to 15 percent. Cash and card both work in Prague; smaller towns lean cash.

The rookie mistakes: ordering Czech goulash expecting the Hungarian soup (different dish), expecting tap water (almost never served; order sparkling or still bottled), trying to drink the beer foam separately (the foam is part of the beer and signals freshness from the tap), and tipping like an American (15 percent is generous; rounding up is the minimum). One pilsner is half a liter unless you ask for malé pivo (small, 0.3 liter). Knedliky are eaten with a fork pressed into the meat juices, not separately. Don't ask for ketchup on dumplings.

What to drink with it

Pilsner is the universal pour. Pilsner Urquell on tap is the Czech tradition; Budvar (Budweiser Budvar, the original Budweiser before the American trademark dispute) runs a close second. The unpasteurized tank-fresh pilsner from the brewery taprooms (U Pinkasu in Prague, the Plzen brewery) is the deepest expression. Czech dark lager (the Polotmavy and Cerne styles) handles the heavier braised meats. Moravian wine (Riesling, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Frankovka, Modry Portugal) for the eastern Czech menus. Slivovice (plum brandy) after the meal; Becherovka (the herbal liqueur from Karlovy Vary) is the country's signature digestif.

Where to eat it

Prague holds the most concentrated Czech-restaurant density: U Modre Kachnicky (the duck restaurant), Lokal (the modern updated-hospoda chain with multiple branches), U Medvidku (with its in-house Budweiser-not-Budvar brewery), Cestr (the modern Czech meat-focused room), Field (the Michelin-starred modern Czech room), La Degustation Boheme Bourgeoise (the most ambitious modern Czech tasting menu), and U Zlateho Tygra (the most famous classic hospoda, where Vaclav Havel drank). Plzen is the pilsner pilgrimage city, with the Plzensky Prazdroj brewery restaurant. Brno runs Pavillon and the Moravian-leaning modern rooms. Cesky Krumlov has the deeper Bohemian taverns. Outside Czechia, Vienna's Czech-influenced rooms, Berlin (a long Czech expatriate tradition), and the Chicago Czech-American restaurants (Klas, Bohemian Crystal) hold the diaspora line.

A short history

Czech cuisine took its modern shape during the Habsburg empire, when Bohemian and Moravian cooking absorbed Austrian and Hungarian influences while keeping its dumpling-and-beer character. Pilsner was invented in Plzen in 1842 (Pilsner Urquell, the original pale lager that defines the worldwide pilsner style today). The post-1989 Czech kitchen has rebuilt the tavern tradition publicly, and a small but real modern-Czech scene (Field, Cestr, La Degustation Boheme Bourgeoise) now sits alongside the classic hospoda.

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