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!
Oh, what a year 2017 was. What started rather slowly has become, both for us personally and for Prague’s food scene in general, a year of excitement and hope. Here’s the year 2017 in review, as it relates to the Prague food scene.
(And yes, we did not know what picture to post as the title photo, so we put a pic from Maso a Kobliha with JJ's first hand modeling assignment.)
This post is really one long apology.
You see, if you’ve been reading this blog for some time, you may have noticed that the frequency of our blog posts has decreased in the past years. Well, „decreased“ is a nice way of putting it. We hardly posted anything this year. We’re sorry. We did not die, or split up, or go on a hunger strike. But there’s a reason for the silence, and a change is coming.
Here's the penultimate edition of “Prague Five Faves”, where we introduce the people behind Taste of Prague. Before we finish off next week with Zuzi, we still have to introduce Martin.
You know, Czech has a formal and an informal “you” (think “tú” and “usted” in Spanish). And just like Jaromir Jagr, the Czech ice-hockey legend and Jan’s future husband (if his dream/nightmare becomes a reality), Martin hasn’t used the formal “you” in years. Yup, you had Martin at “hello”. You’re friends now.
He also has a very interesting background (and we don’t meant that physically): How on earth does a psychotherapist with an Austrian passport born in the Czech Republic become a butcher in Prague? Is it because stabbing dead flesh with a knife gives you more job satisfaction than dealing with problems of people who are alive? Well, that’s Jan’s theory. The fact is we hit it off the instant he appeared behind the counter of the Nase maso butcher shop, and we’ve been hitting it off ever since. He’s a big guy with an even bigger heart who’s main problem is that he doesn’t call Zuzi after the tour to tell her how it went soon enough because he just wants to make sure you don’t get lost on your way to the hotel so he just takes you there. Or for a beer.
And he loves food. Having travelled through most of the world (under conditions we sometimes find hard to believe - do commercial aircrafts really have a spare seat in the back?) and eaten just about anything, Martin knows good food and spends most of his free time trying to recreate the food memories he has gathered over the years. Want to meet him on Sunday? Check out the Vietnamese Sapa market, or the new Mexican joint that has just opened. Do you want to meet him at night? Just visit a popular pub or club. Because he just loves company, and the company loves him back.
Still going on strong with “Prague Five Faves”, where we introduce the people behind Taste of Prague and where we spill the beans on where we like to eat in Prague, and whom we like to webstalk. Next up: Anna.
If there is a true food nerd in the Taste of Prague team, it must be Anna, a.k.a. the Food Pioneer. I mean, how many inches wide should be the fat layer on a 10-month old Prestice pig? Yeah, we have no idea. Let’s ask Anna! She’ll know! And you know what? She will. And her stories all involve food, foraging, working at the butcher shop, or something along those lines. Many people think that we all eat too much food. Anna doesn’t just eat it. She lives food.
And she puts all her nerdy food wisdom into practice. As a graduate of the Agricultural University, she has now turned her thesis paper into a popular elderflower soda called Divozenka, available in selected shops and cafes in Prague. You should check it out. And Silak, her beef and chicken broths, have been staples at Prague’s farmers markets, which are the places she loves the most we think.
We met her once at the Dejvice market, the last one of the season. She said she’s closing early because she has to make the round and talk to all the other vendors to say bye and see what they’re up to. And that’s Anna. Connecting with other people through food. We like that.
We continue with the 2nd edition of our “Prague Five Faves”, where we introduce the people behind Taste of Prague and where we spill the beans on what we actually like in Prague. Next up: Karolina.
When we told Michal, the sommelier at Cafe Savoy, that Karolina would we working with us, he had to have a seat. He knew her too well, having roamed the city with her, hopping from bar to bar. He said she was perfect for us. And he was right. Yes, Karolina likes to party and we are yet to meet a person who wouldn’t want to have a drink with her, having known her for at least ten minutes. Yet she is organised and reliable. More than we are. We guess that’s what being a mom of a super cute toddler does to you.
What Jan admires about Karolina is her system of “cheat days”. While Jan just goes on a eating rampage with the will power of a three-year-old in an empty candy story without adult supervision, Karolina stays calm, breaths in, breaths out and let’s the opportunity go, instead waiting for one of her cheat days when the limits are off. Eating out with her is fun: just like Zuzi, preparation seems to be a big part of Karolina’s eating out experience. She just has a plan when she walks into a restaurant and sticks to it. And we like a woman with a plan.
Karolina’s also an unlimited source of incredibly funny stories and an open book who just loves people. Need a recharge? Just give Karolina some enthusiasm and affection, and you’ll get it back tenfold. And she’s our resident dim sum dumpling expert. A lover of Asian cuisine, she knows where to go and what to get. Just ask her. Trust us.
