Eating and touring Prague in one day
Tasting Prague’s tasty street and local foods
A chocolate café in Prague old town
Who wants a bite of this Horice roll?
We are presented two perfect cigar shaped Horice rolls with a small shot glass filled with melted chocolate. A local favorite, Horice rolls are paper thin wafers filled with thick whipped cream. Simply done, you take a roll, dip it in the melted chocolate and quickly pop it in your mouth. OMG, it’s amazingly light with chocolaty goodness swirling around your mouth. The fun part is that you get to repeat the process over and over until you scrape off most the chocolate drips from the glass. Thank you Choco Café U Klimenta, this was a fun way to start our tour with this chocolaty dessert.
Eating and touring Prague in one day – Tasting Horice rolls dipped in hot chocolate
Sculptures and central square in Prague’s Jewish district
The Jewish district in Prague’s old town
It’s a good thing that the tour requires us to walk around the whole city with stops at certain points to sample something special. I think it is an excellent way to keep our appetites in check while burning some calories along the way. Just a short walk into Prague’s Old Town is the Jewish district, which has a plethora of eateries and specialty food shops. In a three block stretch, this food zone is filled with delis, specialty food markets, coffee shops, bars and cafes. It’s a trendy area that caters to locals and tourists visiting all day and late into the night.
Our next stop is a small take-away sandwich shop called Sisters. Their specialty are open faced sandwiches called chlebícky, which is a very popular picnic or fast food take out in Prague. The owners take the classic sandwich to another level with their colorful presentation using fresh, local and in season ingredients. Their modern take on this classic sandwich has made this a very popular take out spot to enjoy their sandwiches.
Eating and touring Prague in one day – Tasting open faced sandwiches in the Jewish district
Chlebícky details
Our guide comes out of the shop with gorgeous trays of their open face sandwiches. The whole presentation is lovely with each sandwich looking like little pieces of art. Everyone wants take pictures of the food and I finally grab a sandwich filled with a beet spread, goat cheese and walnut. I quickly pop it into my mouth and wow the taste is amazing. It’s filled with cheesy, sweet and crunchy flavors all coming out at the same time and you get a zesty, peppery finish in the end. We taste two more sandwiches, one with sardines and onions and the other, a sauerkraut pickled sandwich with tomato and cheese. They are both tasty and packed with flavor and I go back and eat a few more of my favorites from the batch.
Tasting an open faced sandwiches with beets, cheese and walnuts in the Jewish district
Tasting sausages and cured meets in the Jewish district
We didn’t have to walk far to get to our next stop which was right next door. Nase Maso is a specialty butcher selling cured meats and specialty cuts from their store in Prague. Our guide brings out a huge platter of local sausages and cured meats made on the premises. What a delicious spread (above), there was a little of everything from salty ham, house-made pate, spicy sausages, and a thick pastrami style meat. This was served with a local bread and mustard that made the all the meats even tastier. Only less than a year old, Nase Maso is already known as the ‘It place’ for locally made meats or specialty meat products from Prague, and it is a very popular take out spot.
Dining in a bell tower
Fortunately after stopping to sample those sandwiches and cured meats, we get to take a nice long walk through different sections of the old town. Our guide points out some nice facts and historic details about the area, including some food inspired stories about the new Bohemian lifestyle, giving us a better impression of what it is like to be living in this busy metropolis. In just one section we pass in the old town, the street is filled with stunning architecture, ornate music halls, medieval towers and intimate cobbled streets and shops. After walking through a series of pedestrian promenades, we make it to our next stop, which surprisingly is a bell tower called the Jindrisska tower. We take an elevator up the tower to the Zvonice restaurant which has beautiful views looking out to the old town in different directions.
Eat Sauerkraut soup in a bell tower, Prague old town
Sauerkraut soup anyone?
Our guide explains that the specialty of this restaurant is a sauerkraut soup which didn’t sound too appetizing at first, but once I took a sip, I was hooked. This Bohemian specialty is a local favorite with a thick, sour texture that coats your throat with a creamy, smooth after taste. The soup is delicious and has a nice crunchy texture from the pickled cabbage. I think overall, this stop was the most unusual dining spot and unique local food that we did on the entire tour.
Eating Sauerkraut soup at a bell tower in Prague’s old town
Passing through the colorful shopping district at Wenceslas square
Touring Wenceslas square to our next foodie destination in Prague
Fortunately after eating that filling soup, we took another nice walk through the area of Wenceslas square, a large plaza that is a popular gathering spot for protests, special gatherings or events. Currently, the area is also well known for the many fashion and trendy international brands that make this shopping district a very busy shopping venue. The beautiful park and median areas offer nice green belts that are filled with gorgeous annuals like the tulip images above.
Quirky art in an old style shopping arcade
The area around Wenceslas squares has many old world style arcades that were very popular in the early 19th to 20th century and the guide takes us to see some of them which are really fascinating. At this one arcade below, he shows us this bizarre but cool sculpture. It’s from a notorious sculpture, David Cerny, who makes a parody of everything, including this piece below which shows a dead horse with Wenceslas sitting proudly on the upside down horse. Our guide explains that everything is left to interpretation on this contemporary piece, but everyone locally assumes it is a political statement criticizing the Czech politician, Vaclav Klaus.
Contemporary art in a historic arcade at Prague
An afternoon outdoor picnic in a café/restaurant off Wenceslas square
An afternoon outdoor picnic anyone?
Just off Wenceslas square is our next stop which is a new addition to the Eating Prague tour. This venue called Style & Interior is a combination of interior boutique store, with a café and nice outdoor areas for lounging. You have your choice from their menu of delicious appetizers and entrees made with locally sourced food and other seasonal specialties. We find a large outdoor table with comfortable wicker chairs and enjoy some delicious local red wine with a local pate and salad. It’s a wonderful way to spend an afternoon in Prague, and I could have easily done that but we had one last destination to visit with our main entrée and dessert.
Red wine and pate and salads style picnic off Wenceslas square
An elegant lunch and finale
Our last stop brings us to the elegant but casual CAFÉ LOUVRE, which is one of the oldest restaurants in Prague established in 1902. Bearing the name of the iconic museum, the restaurant echoes a refined and stately interior and the menu offers very traditional fare. We are here to sample a classic Czech dish – Czech dumplings with braised beef and cranberry compote. (image below). Following entrée is our dessert with another traditional specialty, jablecný závin (apple strudel).
Café Louvre for our main meal and dessert
The environment is relaxed and we are able to spend more time for our last food stop and order some beer and wine first. The entrée comes in next and it is a generous plate filled with dumplings and braised beef (easily a meal on its own). I’m about to explode but I taste some of the wonderful and rich flavors of the beef that practically melt in your mouth. The dumplings are perfect for sopping up all the wonderful gravy which is more like a soup. The only odd thing included was a dollop of whipped cream on top of the beef, which was a little different and made the entire dish sweet.
Slowly braised beef and Czech dumplings with cranberry compote
Dessert at last, strudel anyone?
I can’t believe we all had just enough space in our tummies to try the strudel dessert. And yes, it was so good including some fresh cream you pour on top, making a sinfully exquisite ending.
Prague strudel and crème at Café Louvre
A sweet note on the table
Welcome sign at Café Louvre, Prague
What a magnificent end to our eating and walking tour, you really do get your money’s worth on the Eating Prague tour. We said goodbye to our guide and the other participants spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the area around Wenceslas square and the New town, minus any more food stops. I’m so glad that we spent the previous day walking around the city, and burning a lot of calories in anticipation of this food tour. You can check out my previous post of my first impressions of Prague – a walking tour of the main attractions done in one day.
Open plaza at Wenceslas square
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Thanks so much for joining me today on this Eating and touring Prague in one day experience. If you enjoyed the post, could you please share it with any of the social media buttons located around the post, thanks so much.
I was a guest with Eating Prague for this exceptional tour, if you want to find our more about their tours, you can check out their website here. Of course all personal opinions and thoughts about the tour were my own and this is definitely a wonderful food and walking tour to experience in Prague.
OMG I love food and that Horice roll looks absolutely divine! !
O really enjoy walking and eating tours. Not only do you get to learn more about a pace but you also get that wonderful food to eat. Great photos
I so need to do this food tour! It all looks and sounds so tempting from the open sandwiches to the strudle. I’ve been longing to go back to Prague for quite sometime and now I know exactly what I’ll be doing when I finally get there!
What a great place to do a tour like this – there is so many different influences to the food that you need a guide not to miss anything. Also – good balance, you could spend all day sightseeing that this is a good diversion!
I hope someday to visit this amazing place like this
Wish I could have joined you for real, rather than just virtually. I loved Prague, and the food there. These photos are so clear, I can almost taste the magic. Thanks.