Related articles

The Prague restaurant Eska has newly received the Michelin guide’s Bib Gourmand ranking, which is awarded to places with “exceptional good food at moderate prices”. Eska is part of the Ambiente restaurant group and is located in the capital's Karlín district. Three restaurants in the city, Alcron, La Degustation and Field, held on to their highly prestigious Michelin stars in the latest edition of the world-renowned guide.

Jakub Krejčík, 33, is the head and co-founder of Heaven Labs, the producer of the MANA nutritional product, which went from being a hobby to a major business. MANA is specially-designed food in liquid form for people on the go, rigorously-tested to provide the nutrients the body needs. One bottle serves as a single meal for anyone with a busy schedule. Last year, Heaven Labs had a turnover of more than 50 million crowns and is looking to expand its existing network in Europe and newly to the United States.

In recent years, Prague has been attracting more and more visitors who are interested specifically in the local cuisine and beverages. Besides regular food tours there are also special one-off events, such as the Natural Born Butchers’ wine tasting party inspired by the pig slaughter season, combining mostly Bohemian and Moravian wines and specialties made from a traditional Czech breed of pig.

Every year Prague City Tourism highlights selected attractions aimed at drawing more visitors to the Czech capital. This year the accent is on “slow tourism” promoting the city’s cafes, restaurants and the best of Czech design. To find out more I spoke to Kateřina Pavlítová, Marketing Director at Prague City Tourism.

Czech finance minister Andrej Babiš has weighed into the debate about his flagship measure, electronic cash registers. At a conference in the eastern city of Olomouc on Wednesday the minister said that more restaurants opened than closed in December last year after the introduction of his measure to counter the gray economy and tax fraud. He added that restaurant turnover had risen by 100 percent. Many other associations and groupings argue that pubs and restaurants closed ahead and after the introduction of the so-called EET measure. A grouping of local councils argued that 700 pubs closed for good as a result. Babiš gave no specific figures during the conference.

Prices in Czech restaurants have risen on average by four crowns following the introduction of finance minister Andrej Babiš’ flagship electronic cash registers at the start of December according to the daily Dnes. The price increases differ across the country with the steepest rises of around 10 crowns in the central Bohemia region, the paper added. The findings are based on a survey of around 4,000 restaurants focus on the price of the main meal. Besides the introduction of the so-called EET, prices of some staple foods and drink, such as beer and cheese, have also climbed during December, the paper said.

Over the years many Christmas programmes on Radio Prague have been dedicated to the Czech festive cuisine but there are still specialties which have been somewhat neglected and which definitely deserve more attention. Among them vánočka or Christmas sweet bread. In today’s programme we’ll be looking at this traditional type of pastry. For that I’m joined by translator Lucie Mikolajková, a mother of two and also a fine cook, who will show me how it is made.

Czech fisheries are gearing up for the annual Christmas carp sales around the country, when sales of home-bred carp go through the roof due to the traditional Czech Christmas dinner of fried carp and potato salad. Although carp makes up for close to 90 percent of the fresh water fish bred in the Czech Republic many Czechs only ever eat it once a year- the rest is sold abroad.

In the Czech Republic, smokers, roughly a quarter of the population, burn through 21 billion cigarettes each year; but after last Friday, they are likely to soon no longer be able to smoke in restaurants or pubs. Lawmakers in the lower house of parliament passed a long-awaited anti-smoking bill.

Around 700 village pubs are reported to have closed down in connection with the introduction of a law on electronic cash registers at the start of December, the ctk news agency reports citing the results of a survey among the country’s 6,200 towns and cities. The pubs closing down generally offer beer, but not food, and serve as social hubs in small villages. The mayors of many small villages say they fear for the fate of small mixed shops which are often the only source of groceries for the locals. The introduction of electronic cash registers was the finance minister’s flagship project to curb tax evasion.