Cestr
Central location, right off Wenceslaus square across from beautiful National Museum featured on Prague postcards and magnets. Spacious and bright modern decor with a dedicated bar area and shelves with pickling throughout. The specialty is Czech meats, so it’s a fearsome steak selection, with liver, hearts, gizzards and brains of various animals also making appearance on the menu. The wine list has local products by the glass, the portions are generous and service is friendly.
Knedlin
So knedlyk is a traditional Czech filled dumpling that’s been deep-fried. It’s the size of a tennis ball and Knedlyn has the process nailed out, producing thousands of them in an open kitchen for immediate consumption. Fillings are generally savory, with various meats, cheeses and veggies, as well as desserty, such as berries or pistachio. Unassuming fast food type set up where you order and immediately get a tray with the dumplings, open seating throughout the restaurant. It could get busy at peak times. Best to order maybe 2-3 dumplings a person, as they’re quite filling, and the thick shell makes for a lot of dough.
Aromi
Beautiful Italian venue facing a shady square with a beautiful St Ludmila’s basilica. It positions itself as a fresh Sicilian seafood place, and this being landlocked Czechia, it’s not cheap. The service is attentive and the wine list is decent quality. Sicilians generally hold low opinion of their wine, but you might get lucky with some random Etna DOCG vintage. White cloth restaurant in great setting on a quiet plaza.
Alma
New York Times mentioned this place in their 36 hours in Prague, noting that the kitchen “merges traditional ingredients with cutting-edge techniques. Recipes include ingredients foraged from Czech forests and fields, as well as unusual pickles (pumpkin, green walnuts and more) made in the restaurant’s fermentation “lab.” Truly memorable lunch there – grilled rabbit liver, marinated kohlrabi, gnocchi and elderflower ice cream. I think it’s a place I want to come back to if I’m ever in Prague again.
Vycep
Speaking of places to come back, Vycep was a pleasant surprise. It’s a Michelin Bib Gourmand, so not exactly off the beaten path, but it’s fairly far away from the historic center and tourist crowds. It struck me as a place that’s a neighborhood restaurant, where locals go by default. Once again, there was good amount of fermentation featured on the menu as well as in the decor. Stracciatella salad was well-executed and the portion was nice for the price, the roasted lamb potato dumpling was a tennis-ball-sized comfort food designed to be consumed with good wine. Like many other places at Prague, Vycep’s wine list features a bunch of Italian wines with a few local producers making an appearance. The waiter seemed to enjoy talking about wine, I sensed he was taking a break from the beer scene.
La Veranda
Kinda in the midst of the historic town, a block away from fashion-forward LVMH-dominated Paryzska street (take a right when you pass Chanel, Longchamp and Rimowa) across from Spanish synagogue is a cute little restaurant whose shelves are filled with books, not bottles of wine or pickling jars. You’re in Prague and this place bills itself as Italian, so it was almost empty for lunch except for another table besides us. People are missing out. The food was inventive and well-executed, with generous servings. I liked the mustard- and horseradish-laden beef tartare, which they fit into a taco-looking potato boat. Other people in my party enjoyed rabbit and duck, the waiter spoke very good English (turned out he was a French Palestinian, so fluently spoke like 20 languages) and offered quite a bit of humorous take. Enjoyed the service and the meal.
U Kalendu
They do a pretty solid lunch, with local traditional options for appetizer, main course and dessert, and they manage to deliver quality cooking at a pretty nice price point. The seating is mainly communal tables, and at busy hours can feel cramped, but overall the vibe is that of a casual eatery beloved by locals. It’s between the Dancing Building and Charles bridge, so a good spot to drop by whenever you are doing the touristy rounds. Specifically “dropping by” is hard though, as it tends to get filled with reservations-only crowd. They’re not afraid to delve into the whole-animal cooking approach, featuring items such as pig snout, duck hearts and rabbit legs.
Mlynec
Both a primetime view of the Charles bridge and an incredible interior transporting you into an equivalent of a forest. Each dish was executed to a superb level, and the wine list was impressive. Quality service and tasty food. They’re mentioned in Michelin guide, but it seems to be a temporary misnomer – this level of service and attention to presentation usually gets a 1* in Michelin book. They weren’t cheap, but English was spoken easy and the service was effortless.
Monarch Steakhouse
This classy place purports to be a traditional steakhouse with fairly expansive menu. My beef (get it?) with them is the focus on the American USDA cuts vs cultivating local farming relationships like Cestr does. I get it that Prague restaurants are not just for tourists, and sometimes the locals want to go to a decent steakhouse, and as far as the ambiance and cuts Monarch stands out with its US and Australian beef, but a menu of more local meats (maybe lamb, maybe chicken) would brighten the visit. Other than that the service was friendly, on a hot day the fans were rotating at full volume, and the wine list very impressive for the country that has higher than average per capita beer consumption. Good steak, good times.
Levitate
Modern inventive cuisine from a chef with Vietnamese origins, incorporating ingredients into works of art. It’s a Michelin 1* place with prolonged (2+ hours) dinner service, where the menu features a dozen or so dishes, but each one is a bit more than bite-size. The recurring theme was vegetarian + sea + land, so you got 3 starters with veggie, seafood and meat centerpieces, followed by mains and so on. There’s even an attempt to incorporate those (seafood and meat specifically) into the dessert. Memorable experience, great restaurant for celebration and theatrics.
