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The soft drink company Kofola this week opened its first brand restaurant in the Czech capital, NaGrilu. As the name implies, the venues will offer dishes off the grill, as well as beverages by the company as well as fresh fruit and vegetable juice from UGO and Mangaloo. While it offers fast food, it will apparently be with a difference: an emphasis on healthy and fresh ingredients.

Prague’s Vinohrady and Žižkov are two up-and-coming culinary neighbourhoods full of quaint cafés and charming watering holes. Since living in the area, I’ve tried to spend as much time as possible café hopping, and sampling some of the tasty treats and comfortable ambiance on offer.

A hospital in Plzeň has treated some 80 people suffering stomach problems and diarrhea, the Czech News Agency reports. Of those, 30 were hospitalised. Medical tests revealed the nature of the infection: salmonella in spaghetti at a meal preperation and delivery service which sent out 140 portions on Friday. The hospital said it has now only seen a few new cases, suggesting most of those affected had already been treated.

Even though I am not blessed with a Czech grandmother who can offer me some of the traditional dishes from Czech cuisine, I discovered the next best thing in the form of a classic Czech cafeteria in the centre of Old Town. Havelská Koruna is one of the most unique dining spaces I have found in Prague, with a counter that includes over 40 different Czech dishes each day, and a long line of customers eagerly waiting for a budget lunch in the centre of Old Town. Nowhere else have I been able to find such an extensive list of traditional Czech

The State Veterinary Administration (SVS), which is tasked with ensuring the safety of animal products in the Czech Republic, found oversights at 15 percent of restaurants, according to its latest interim report. Prague was found to have the greatest number of problem restaurants, with 34 percent of checks revealing shortcomings. The SVS says it has carried out 6,243 inspections of restaurants and diners so far this year. Of the 15 percent of facilities found wanting, the most common problems were lack of proper documentation regarding meat origins, and also shortcomings regarding hygiene - including insufficient monitoring of expiration dates. The SVS is newly empowered to carry out such inspections as of 2015; it has so far issued 3 million crowns worth of fines.

Under a freshly launched project, Czech mushroom pickers are now able to turn the hugely popular hobby into cash. The South Bohemian company České houby is now buying up their finds and delivering them to supermarkets around the country, Hospodářské noviny reported.

A record number of food outlets and restaurants have been closed down so far this year according to the State Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority. The authority said that so far it has ordered the closure of 131 businesses, mostly on hygiene grounds. It can also close establishments for the fraudulent sale of goods. Most of the recent closures have been Vietnamese restaurants.

Amidst the sweltering summer, like many Czechs, I began to crave some ice cream. Thankfully, this frozen substance has become something of a universal language, so it was no surprise that Prague offers some terrific ice cream opportunities. Ovocný Světozor has been serving ice cream to locals since 1992, and it doesn’t look like the popularity is going to dissipate anytime soon. Angelato and Puro are two establishments that serve gelato made the Italian way, based on using fresh ingredients and ensuring that each flavor is handmade in small

“Eat breakfasts like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper” – that’s my motto. I had been told that breakfast on the continent would be quite different than back in the States, less of an occasion; less opulent. Bread, jam, and coffee, perhaps.

I wish I had visited the Gastronomy Museum when I first arrived in Prague, so that I would have understood where Czech culinary traditions originated from before embarking on my eating tour of the city.