What We Eat in Prague

Do you like vepřové (pork)? Or are you more of a kuřecí (chicken) person? Do you like brambory (potatoes)? If you don't, you may starve in Czechia.

Yes, food, glorious food! At the risk of offending the good people of the Czech Republic--and my own family's heritage--when I decided to move to Prague, I wasn't exactly looking forward to switching to a Czech diet. I'm both an eclectic and a picky eater, and living on meat and potatoes -- "maso a brambory" in Czech -- has never appealed to me that much. 

Fortunately, while it is true that "maso a brambory" form the backbone of the traditional Czech diet, it is not the extent of the traditional Czech diet. Moreover, the traditional Czech diet is just one option in modern Prague. Moreover, moreover, sometimes "maso a brambory" is utterly delicious.

But first, a word about words. Basic food words are often among the first we learn when we visit or move to a foreign country, if only to prevent us from eating anything terrifying. In Czech, this is slightly complicated by the fact that the words are declined, so brambory, i.e., "potatoes," can be written in multiple different ways depending on its grammatical roles. A general tip is to know the stems of words, and generally ignore the endings unless you want something very specific. However, most places have English menus, so it's all gonna be fine.

So, join me as we do a tour of some very common Czech dishes!

When in doubt, "smažený" and "sýr" are good words to look for.

My first proper Czech meal, a day or so after I arrived in Prague, was at a drab, underground, "behind the Iron Curtain" feeling place just off Wenceslas Square (Václavské náměstí), where, after I attempted to say the very basic words "smažený sýr" several times, the stern looking cafeteria woman gestured that I should use the English language corkboard menu available. Feeling utterly defeated, I meekly pointed to "fried cheese," and she promptly served me my lunch. 

Fortunately, the magic of fried (smažený) cheese (sýr) is universal and quickly eased my embarrassment. Often served as shown above with boiled potatoes and butter (vařené brambory s máslem), the usual cheese is edam (spelled eidam in Czech), though some places will also offer a camembert version--both very mild cheeses suitable for eating in large hunks. "Hranolky"--French fries--is another common side option, and the dish, in any form, comes with either tartar sauce (tatárska omáčka) or mayo (majonéza). This dish also has the virtue of being incredibly cheap, often around 100 Kc ( $4.75 or so).

Did someone say dumplings?

Goulash! Yes, while Americans probably most closely associate this paprika-seasoned soup/stew with Hungary, it is common all over Central and Eastern Europe, and pretty much any Czech menu will feature traditional beef goulash (tradiční hovězí guláš) prominently on the menu. Goulash is usually a pretty simple soup--some aromatics, stock, lots of paprika, beef--but every region and city seems to have its own variant. I'll admit, I'm not really a soup person, and I'm not a huge fan of goulash, but it's at least more interesting than a standard American-style beef stew.

Arguably, though, the real stars of many goulashes are the dumplings (knedlíky) that often accompany it and take up all that extra sauce. Made either from potatoes (bramborové knedlíky) or from bread (houskové knedlíky), dumplings are integral to many Czech dishes. Potato dumplings (the ones on the far left in the picture above) are made from potatoes mixed with flour, occasionally some egg--they are then boiled or steamed. Often, as shown above, they are made in logs and then sliced, though if you want to make them at home, you can just make lumps of the dough and cook that. Bread dumplings (far right) are made from white bread instead of potatoes, but otherwise the process is similar. They are often very pillowy with lots of airholes and are actually the "correct" dumpling for goulash, though many restaurants now serve both. When I ordered my first goulash, I actually got neither, but instead had tasty grated potato cakes called "bramboracky."

Every bit as delicious as they look.

Czech food: delicious in either casual or formal guise.

On the more expensive end of the spectrum are dishes like roast duck (pečená kachna, seen above done all fancy-like with the usual pairings of dumplings and Czech red cabbage) or pork, often served with similar sides and called something like "vepřo-knedlo-zelo" which just means "pork-dumplings-cabbage." Often, it is a pork knee, neck, or knuckle--a pig's joint of some kind or another--instead of a roast or medallion. 

One final amusing note about the various Czech sides: many menus will, theoretically, allow you to pick a side to go with your main dish--say boiled potatoes or bread dumplings. In practice, though, it is not uncommon for servers to essentially say, "No, you chose incorrectly, you should choose that instead." I don't know if this is a helpful service reserved solely for expats--or if Czechs would never be gauche enough to order the "incorrect" side for their meal--but it certainly makes me wonder why they don't just pair the side with the entree in the first place...

Street food, on the other hand, often means...

No size jokes, please.

Yes, sausages. These "klobása"--which literally just means sausages--are often sold on the street, quite cheaply, with a piece of rye bread (lots of rye bread here) and some mustard and maybe ketchup.

So close to being a sandwich, and yet so far...

For something less challenging--and arguably more interesting--you can also get various kinds of crepes, both sweet and savory, as well as toasties (what everyone outside America calls grilled cheese sandwiches), grill cheese (a slice of cheese cooked all brown on a grill served with a bit of bread), or raclette, an alpine dish that involves taking a hot knife and using it to insta-melt cheese over potatoes and whatnot.

Those potatoes are about to get so much more gooier.

However, as mentioned above, fewer Czech people eat this way on a daily basis than did 30, 20, or even 10 years ago. Now, for every "traditional" Czech restaurant there are multiple restaurants offering all sorts of other options. Probably the most common is Chinese, "čínská restaurace" being a sign I learned to translate within 10 minutes of arriving in Prague. It's essentially American style take-out Chinese food, right down to the menu options.

Yup, you can get Kung Pao chicken, peanuts and all.

Many restaurants offer also Vietnamese or Thai dishes, or do a sort of pan-Asian thing. Vietnamese people make up the 3rd largest immigrant community in Czechia, after Slovaks and Ukrainians, and they brought their food with them. Many neighborhoods have multiple options for pretty tasty food from Southeast Asia, as well as Indian, sushi, and even some Korean barbecues. These are all in addition to most of the European cuisines, and even American. Mexican is present...but not really entirely recognizable.

However, the most common restaurant meal in Czechia may well be something like this:

Fun fact: KFC here is terrible

Or even this:

Not shown: existential sadness.

Anyone who knows me knows that I *love* fast food, always have, and likely always will. It's predictable, comforting, and, of course, fast--and yes, often very tasty. So, I am not about to chastise Czechs, especially young Czechs, for lining up for KFC as if they have an Oprah-provided coupon for free chicken. But even when all the food is fast food--like at the innumerable mall food courts around Prague--folks still go to KFC. They will wait in long lines at McDonald's instead of going over to the Czech place for some smažený sýr s hranolkami, even though the Czech food is often cheaper. It's possible that, especially for the younger crowd, the American chains still hold something of the allure of the exotic, and the food they get there may be a break from the traditional Czech food they get at home. But I have to imagine that the folks working at the Czech stands have to be thinking, "Hey, we got fried cheese and fries, too! And fried chicken! (Schnitzel or "řízek" being just as common here as in Austria and Germany.) Why not come here?!"

Will the inexorable growth of American chains mark the end of traditional Czech cuisine? It's unlikely, because, if nothing else, tourists love sitting down for a traditional Czech meal in the Old City, and paying 2-3x the price they would pay if they went for the same meal just a bit further out. Plus, it's pretty tasty, and tasty food will always be popular food.

Next week, we'll look at pastries and sweets! Czechs aren't huge dessert people, unlike the Austrians or the Germans, but there's still some pretty tasty stuff out there... 

Go to my Patreon page at www.patreon.com/sjcaustenite for all my posts and for information on how to support the blog--and a HUGE thank you to everyone who already does. If you're ever in Prague, let me know and we'll get dumplings. :-)