Influencers, as a new phenomenon in travel and food, never cease to fascinate us. And we are not talking about the Kardashian lookalikes that will try to sell you anything from energy water to teeth whitening products. We are talking about the people who you may not follow, or even know about, but influencer the way you eat or travel even without you realizing it. And when you think about it, journalists are the prototypical influencers. So you read an article about a destination and though hmmm, that sounds nice… maybe we could go there next year, what interests me is who wrote that piece, who edited it and in what way, who decided to run it in the first place, and so on.

Which brings us to the guest of Episode 8 of our little podcast, Joann Plocková. Joann is travel and design writer who has written pieces for the likes of The New York Times, Monocle, AFAR (once about us, yay!), Financial Times, Conde Nast Traveller and others. And she also wrote a part of the Louis Vuitton guide for Prague and the Wallpaper guide for Prague. Talk about influencing the way you travel! 

Anyway, Joann is one of the nicest writers we have ever worked with - she does not just phone it in (and believe us, we have worked with multiple journalists who hardly did anything but phoning it in, and they are, sadly, influencers too) and she takes her research and writing very seriously. She also happens to be a US expat who has been living in Prague steadily since 2007 and has a unique perspective on Prague and Central Europe as a whole.

We met in the great Ronin Coffee Spot in the Vinohrady district and chatted about her life as an expat in Prague, about the hustle of being a freelance journalist, about the success rate of her pitches (you’ll be surprised - she knows a thing or two about pitching), and about a thing that I have been discussing quite a bit: who actually writes the narrative about a destination, and can locals do anything about it? Like when Buzzfeed puts out a picture of the horrendous trdelník pastry and in a few weeks, it becomes the most Instagrammed food of Prague, while local foodies just shake their heads in bitter disbelief, is there anything we can do to change that?

Anyway, if you have ever though about influencers, narratives of different destinations, or ever though about being a freelance journalist or travel writer, this episode is for you.

Okay, all Czech chefs who worked, not staged, in multiple three-Michelin star restaurants in a big city abroad, hands up! Okay, there must be only one. Bára Šimůnková has worked in Eleven Madison Park, Le Bernardin and Per Se, three 3-Michelin stars in New York City. Again, was not there on a stage (except Eleven Madison Park) - she actually worked there as a line chef. And now she’s coming back and is hopefully due to open a restaurant in Prague in the spring. Oh yeah, and she’s not even 30.

Anyway, we have heard of Bára when she came back and worked at our favorite bakery in Prague, Praktika, and it was nearly mythical: „have you heard of this Bára? She worked at Per Se and Le Bernardin and she’s amazing.“ And as will be revealed in the podcast, she was praised by Paul Day when he hired her for Sansho as her first job out of school. Given all that, it’s a wonder that Bára has been moving below the radar and has not been filling the title pages of major Czech cooking and food magazines.

Maybe it’s because she’s laser-focused and does not waste a lot of time. She knows what she wants and does not take sh*t from anybody. When she felt being passed over for promotion because she was a girl from the East, she went straight to the managers to talk it over. When she arrived in NYC, she basically sent emails to what she thought were the best five restaurants in town, and got a response from three right away.

And now she’s back and due to open a restaurant in Prague. What are the differences between chef life in NYC and Prague? How does she feel about the Prague food scene, having come back from the best restaurants of NY? How demanding is work in a three-Michelin restaurant? What will her Prague restaurant be all about? Listen to find out. Enjoy the podcast with Bára!

oday’s podcast episode is a bit special because it’s the first time we have taken the podcast on the road, namely to Paris, the City of Lights. You know, we have been visiting Paris quite frequently over the years, and while the first, pre-Taste of Prague visit was absolutely delicious dreadful, we’ve learnt to navigate Paris our own way, avoiding the tourist traps and enjoying what Paris does best - food and wine, obviously.

Now, we have posted our tips for Paris previously quite some time ago, but we thought it would be fun to talk to some insiders who have lived in Paris for quite some time and whom we have been following to get some inside scoops about what’s what in the French capital. And it this podcast, we have spoken to two absolutely fantastic ladies who are just that.

Hey there! It’s another Thursday, which means another episode of the Taste of Prague podcast, a podcast by Taste of Prague food tours about travel and food in Prague and the rest of the world. This episode is again more about tourism than food, but we are super excited. We don’t think high-ranking hotel concierges often get to - or want to - talk, so that’s why we are stoked to have been able to record an episode with Mr Petr Zezula, former managing concierge of Prague’s Four Seasons hotel.

When we started Taste of Prague food tours back in 2011, we had absolutely no prior experience with tourism. How it worked, how did the product get to the customer, who do you promote to, how to work with the individual stakeholders, who were the gatekeepers and the movers. But soon enough, having made friends in the industry and meeting and sharing experience with like-minded people who ran tours, too, one name started popping up quite a lot. The ultimate player in the industry. The guy sitting at the very top. The one and only. Capo di tutti capi. Petr Zezula, the managing concierge at the best hotel in town, the Prague Four Seasons, and the President of the Czech Chapter of Les Clefs d’Or organization.

But meeting Petr eye to eye, capo di tutti capi would probably be the last thing on your mind. He is friendly yet dignified, projects a sense of calm and is soft-spoken, and he’s a great listener with a keen and authentic interest in what you have to say. One would even say introverted. But just a few words into the conversation, and you’ll realize Petr is an incredible wealth of knowledge, the person who always knows what to, what the protocol is, and whom to call. And he has this sense of self-confidence that one assumes can only come from years of experience, while being open to new ideas he has not been confronted with.

And perhaps because he resigned from the position and left the Four Seasons a year ago for deeply personal reasons, we had the unique opportunity to talk to him and ask him about the role of the concierge, his own career, and what he misses and does not miss from his old job. We think this episode is a rare insight into the world of a high-ranking concierge and their world that, at times, seems to be rooted in the old, better days of a 1960s Bond movie. (Without the sexism, obviously.)

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Hey there! It’s Thursday, which means another episode of the Taste of Prague podcast, a podcast by Taste of Prague food tours about travel and food in Prague and the rest of the world. And after three episodes about tourism, we finally turn to food: we had the pleasure to interview Vojta Václavík, the chef and owner of the amazing KRO Kitchen. (BTW, if you have been pronouncing KRO in a way that rhymes with “shmoe”, you are wrong. It rhymes with “blue”.)

Now, we’ll admit straight away that we have been huge fans of the little fast food place in the Vinohrady district ever since they opened just a few months ago. Sure, this is fast food, but it ain’t no McDonald’s. The food is super tasty, the produce is sourced from really nice sources (including the farmers market across the street) and the cooking is super smart. KRO Kitchen has been the first place that could go head to head with the cool fast places in bigger cities to the West of Czechia and overseas, and we mean it: deceptively simple, yet made with techniques that could easily find place in the kitchen of a much fancier establishment.

And behind it all is the calm force that is Vojta Václavík. When you think about it, he’s achieved quite a bit given his fairly young age: he worked in such Prague icons as Dahab and Sansho, only to move to Oslo, Norway and work in the Michelin-starred Fauna (now sadly defunct) and then staging in Koka and 28+ in Gothenburg, Sweden. When he came back he took on the uneasy challenge to head the cuisine of the fancy Hergetova Cihelna restaurant. And before all that, he made a small detour and finished university, writing a thesis paper about Eating Habits in the Czech Republic. Not bad for a sweet 17. (Okay, he’s older than that, but you get what I mean.)

Now, saying that Vojta is passionate about his craft would be a cliché that you could say just about any good chef. But Vojta’s passion is different: he’s not a fanboy of some famous chefs - he does have a vision for Czechs to eat better, and he is focused on making sure we all get there. And whether he thinks of it or not in those terms, he cares about sustainability and waste that his business generates.

We recorded the interview in KRO Kitchen during the morning prep, so please excuse the noises in the background, especially in the beginning of the interview, as some technicians were repairing an air duct or something. I could talk with Vojta forever - about his dining experience in Noma, about the cool new projects in Prague, his new kitchen that he is about to open… chatting about all this with the backdrop of the knives hitting the chopping board and breathing in the smells is truly magical. And eating some of the stuff they were preparing after the interview was over was pretty magical too.

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