About This Project

How This Started

I moved to Prague in 2017 for what was supposed to be a two-year contract. Seven years later I am still here, and I have spent a significant portion of that time eating my way through the country's restaurants, pubs, market stalls, and family kitchens.

The site started as a private notebook — a way of keeping track of places I wanted to return to and dishes I wanted to understand better. I began sharing it publicly in 2021 after several friends asked me to write up my recommendations in a form they could actually use.

The focus has always been on Czech cuisine specifically, rather than the broader Prague dining scene that most food writing covers. There are excellent Thai restaurants, Italian trattorias, and Japanese izakayas in Prague. I eat at them and enjoy them. But they are not what this site is about.

What I Write About

The core of the site is traditional Czech cuisine — svickova, goulash, roasted pork, dumplings, the dishes that have been made the same way for generations and that define what Czech cooking actually is. I am interested in the difference between a version made properly and a version made for convenience, and in understanding what that difference requires technically.

I also write about Czech beer culture, which is inseparable from Czech food culture. The pub is a social institution in the Czech Republic in a way that has no real equivalent in most other countries, and understanding it is part of understanding the food.

Occasionally I write about regional Czech cooking — the differences between Bohemian and Moravian cuisine, the specific traditions of particular towns or valleys, the seasonal dishes that only appear for a few weeks each year. This is the part of Czech gastronomy that most visitors never encounter, and it is where I find the most interesting material.

How I Work

I visit restaurants multiple times before writing about them. A single meal is not enough to form a reliable opinion — kitchens have good days and bad days, and a first visit often catches a restaurant at an unrepresentative moment. I try to visit at different times of day and in different seasons before committing anything to the site.

I pay for everything myself. No restaurant has been contacted in advance of a visit, no free meals or hospitality accepted, no advertising or sponsorship arrangements entered into. This is not a moral position so much as a practical one: the moment money enters the relationship between a writer and a restaurant, the writing becomes unreliable.

I am not a professional food critic and do not claim to be. I am someone who has eaten a lot of Czech food over a long period of time and has developed strong opinions about what good versions of it look like. The site reflects those opinions, not any formal expertise.

Contact and Corrections

If you have eaten somewhere I should know about, or if something I have written is factually wrong, I would genuinely like to hear from you. The contact page has my email address. I read everything, though I cannot always respond promptly.

If you are a restaurant owner or PR representative, please understand that I do not accept invitations to visit, products for review, or any other form of commercial relationship. This policy is not negotiable.