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The small Moravian town of Litovel is home to the world’s largest hard cheese factory. Since 1996 when the Italian company Orrero set up its production there, its Gran Moravia cheese has been conquering markets in around the world. Today, the Litovel cheese plant produces around 6,000 tonnes of the parmesan-type cheese, a great majority of which is sold in Italy. In this edition of Marketplace, we talk to the owner of the Orrero company, Roberto Brazzale who says parmesan is not the right name for its flagship product.

Over the past weekend, the Royal Gardens at Prague Castle remained closed to ordinary visitors as they hosted the annual Prague Food Festival – a celebration of good food and fine dining. In the course of three days around three dozen of the country’s best restaurants showcased their dishes, served at moderate prices to an appreciative public.

On Friday, the magnificent Prague Castle gardens will open to host the annual Prague Food Festival – a three-day celebration of fine dining and healthy eating. Foodies from Prague and elsewhere will converge at the venue to sample the delicacies prepared by three dozen classy restaurants and enjoy the festival’s varied accompanying programme.

The vast majority of Czechs want smoke free restaurants. According to the latest survey results 78 percent of respondents –including many smokers – said they would welcome a smoking ban in restaurants across the board. Forty percent of Czech smokers would support such a ban. It is now up to individual restaurant and pub owners to decide whether or not to ban smoking. A large number of them fear that by doing so their would lose many regulars. Efforts to approve a smoking ban in eateries across the country have repeatedly failed in the past.

In this edition of Marketplace, we go to an actual outdoor market. We braved the cold Easter weather this past Saturday and visited one of the city’s popular farmers markets, on Prague’s Jiřího z Poděbrad square.

Sofia Smith, who is half-Irish and half-Asian, has been cooking in Prague since the late nineties. Angel restaurant, where she was the executive head chef, received much critical acclaim – its opening was written about by Fodor’s as “the culinary event of the year” – and as a freelance chef, Sofia Smith continues to put a smile on the faces of Prague’s food lovers. Most recently, she has been hosting themed nights at Prague’s James Joyce Irish Pub and teaching cooking classes at the capital’s Cocina Rivero cooking studio. She speaks about what she

Two Prague restaurants have received a star in this year´s edition of the prestigious French Michelin gastronomic guidebook. Alcron and La Degustation Boheme Bourgeoise, both of which have Czech chefs, won the star for the first time. The Michelin Main Cities of Europe 2012 guidebook includes 2100 restaurants and 1500 hotels in 44 cities in 20 European countries. It also mentions Prague restaurants that were given the Bib Gourmand rating for offering "good food at moderate prices" - SaSaZu, Le Terroir, Aromi and Divinis, which defended this award from last year, along with two "newcomers," Sansho and Monastery. The new edition of the book will be available in select bookstores from Thursday.

Many will remember the joy of getting toy trains as children and watching them zoom down the electric track. Now, somewhat unusually, that innocent excitement can now be relived at a popular Czech restaurant. Located in Brno, Prague and elsewhere, Výtopna is a venue like no other where toy engines – not waiters – deliver drinks to your table. For a country not big on theme-restaurants it has become surprisingly popular: a big hit especially for families with young kids.

The Polish media have dubbed it “saltgate” – revelations that at least three Polish companies have been selling industrial salt (normally used to de-ice roads) to milk, fish, meat and bread producers. Several countries to which Poland may have exported potentially contaminated food products have been identified: Lithuania, Ireland, England, Germany and the Czech Republic. This week, the Czech Agriculture Ministry decided to temporarily block the import of salt from Poland, while tests are carried out by the State Veterinary Administration to determine

The State Veterinary Administration has announced that samples from food known to contain Polish-sourced salt in the Moravian-Silesian region have thus far not shown any evidence of containing dangerous chemicals. The tests come in the wake of a major scandal in Poland, in which for years several companies were found to have been selling salt intended for industrial purposes to food producers. The Czech Republic has provisionally banned the import of salt from Poland with Czech Agriculture Minister Petr Bendl subsequently accusing Poland of providing insufficient information to Czech authorities seeking to assess whether Polish goods contaminated with industrial salt have made their way into the Czech food chain. The Moravian-Sliesian region tests took place in Olomouc with both food and pure salt samples tested. Both were found to be safe; tests on meat products are currently underway with the SVA continuing to press Polish authorities to provide more information over the precise nature of the industrial salt in question and which food companies may have purchased it.