Work through the list in order. Hide the notes when you know what to do.
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Eat svíčková na smetaně
Beef under a thick sauce of puréed root vegetables and cream, with dumplings, a spoon of cranberry and a cloud of whipped cream. The faint sweetness is the dish working as intended, not a kitchen error.
The national dish and the standard test of a good hospoda: the sauce should be silky, with no grains of carrot left. The dumplings are for mopping, not for eating on their own.
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Try Czech goulash
A dark, thick beef stew with onion and caraway, far less paprika-driven than the Hungarian version. Served with dumplings, or in pubs inside a hollowed-out loaf.
Raw onion rings almost always come alongside and go on top. The pivní guláš version is cooked in dark beer and is noticeably sweeter.
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Eat vepřové koleno
Pork knuckle marinated in beer and roasted until the skin crackles, served on a board with mustard, horseradish and pickled peppers. It is a portion for two, and that is not an exaggeration.
It often arrives with a knife stuck in it, which is presentation rather than a challenge. Ask for sauerkraut alongside: it is the only thing that cuts the fat.
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Get to know knedlíky
Boiled slices of dough that stand in for both bread and potatoes. Houskové are bread dumplings, airy and porous; bramborové are potato ones, dense and greyish, for the fattier meats.
You do not cut a dumpling with a knife; traditionally it is divided with a fork or a thread. This is practical rather than ceremonial: a knife compresses it and kills the texture.
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Try smažený sýr
A thick slab of Edam in breadcrumbs, deep-fried and served with potatoes and tartare sauce. The country's main vegetarian dish and the classic post-pub meal.
Kiosks sell it in a bun as a smažák, the late-night version. In a pub ask for potato salad instead of fries, which is how locals take it.
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Order utopenci
Sausages pickled for weeks in vinegar with onion, pepper and bay, served cold with dark bread. The name translates as drowned men, after how they look in the jar.
The classic beer snack, alongside nakládaný hermelín, a camembert-style cheese pickled in oil. Both are cold and come before anything hot.
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Try bramboračka
A thick potato soup with dried mushrooms, marjoram and root vegetables, often served inside a bread loaf. In winter it is a whole lunch rather than a starter.
Dried forest mushrooms are essential; without them it is just potato soup. The other common soup on the menu is česnečka, a garlic broth with croutons and cheese.
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Try kulajda
A sour cream soup with mushrooms, potato, dill and a poached egg in the middle. The vinegar tang is a distinctly Czech note that surprises on the first spoonful.
The egg should be runny: stirring it in is what thickens the soup. The dish is southern Bohemian but appears in any serious Prague kitchen.
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Try Prague ham
Ham brined and lightly smoked over beechwood, with moist pink flesh. Eaten in thin slices with horseradish, or as a hot slab with mustard at a market stall.
Tourist markets often sell ordinary spit-roast pork under this name; the real thing is sold sliced in butchers' shops.
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Understand the trdelník Desserts and pastries
A hollow sweet tube of dough baked on a spit and rolled in sugar and nuts. Tasty when hot, but it is not a Czech tradition — it is a recent invention aimed at visitors.
If you want one, take it plain, without ice cream or a chocolate lining, and only where it is turned in front of you. For an actual Czech dessert, go to koláče instead.
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Try koláče Desserts and pastries
Round yeast pastries with a dip in the middle filled with curd cheese, plum jam or poppy seed. Village baking, found in Prague's old bakeries rather than the cafés on the square.
Poppy seed is taken seriously here and appears more often than chocolate. Wedding koláče are made small, with four different fillings at once.
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Try medovník Desserts and pastries
A layered honey cake with condensed-milk cream between the layers and crumbs on top. Dense, not cloying and available in almost every café — the city's safest dessert.
A good one is moist and soft rather than dry: the layers need time to soak. Take it with black coffee rather than anything sweet.
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Drink Kofola Non-alcoholic drinks
A dark fizzy drink built on a herbal syrup, created in socialist Czechoslovakia as an answer to cola. Less sweet, with a bitter herbal edge, and markedly better from the tap than the bottle.
Ask for točená Kofola, the draught version. It is served in a beer glass and is the standard non-alcoholic order in a pub.
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Drink a světlý ležák Local alcohol
The pale bottom-fermented lager invented in Plzeň that set the standard for half the world. A pub pours it with a thick head that should hold to the bottom of the glass.
There are three pours: hladinka with a normal head, the smaller šnyt, and mlíko, which is almost all foam and drunk like a dessert. Ordering just a beer is fine too.
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Try Becherovka Local alcohol
A herbal liqueur from Karlovy Vary with cinnamon and clove, originally sold as a medicinal tonic. Drunk chilled to a syrupy thickness, in small glasses after a heavy meal.
Mixed with tonic it becomes a beton and drinks as a long cocktail. It is never served warm: the point is the thickness it gets from the cold.
