Czech Republic Travel Guide

Czech Republic — Food and Dining

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Cuisine

Traditional Czech food consists of hearty meat dishes with clear influences from neighboring Austria and Hungary. There is a wide selection of restaurants, beer taverns and wine cellars.

National specialties:
• Svičkova (beef tenderloin with a sour cream sauce) is the national dish, typically served with cranberries and dumplings.
•Polevka (soup) is a common starter and comes in a variety of flavors including garlic (česnečka) and onion (cibulačka).
•Bramborák (a potato fritter flavored with garlic and herbs).
•Kapr (carp) is the national fish, traditionally served at Christmas.

National drinks:
•Pivo (beer, both pale lager, or pilsner, and dark ales, or černý pivo).
•Vino (wine, red, white and sparkling, from Bohemia and Moravia).
•Becherovka (herbal bitters from Karlovy Vary).
•Slivovice (plum brandy).
•Merunkovice (apricot brandy).

Legal drinking age: 18.

Tipping: It is customary to tip 10-15% for good service in a restaurant.

Nightlife

Prague has a diverse nightlife scene with everything from theater, ballet and opera to lap dancing bars and casinos, and a seemingly infinite range of cafes, bars, jazz joints and nightclubs. The city-center districts of Starě Město and Malá Strana are crammed with pubs, clubs and music venues mostly aimed at the tourist market, while the area around Wenceslas Square has a concentration of sports bars and strip clubs - stay clear of this part of town if you want to avoid drunken stag parties.

The up-and-coming suburbs of Vinohrady, just east of Prague city center, and Holešovice, to the north, have lots of cool cafes and hip cocktail bars, and are also home to some of the city's top clubs, including Radost FX (www.radostfx.cz) and the Cross Club (www.crossclub.cz). See www.prague.tv for extensive nightlife listings.

Brno, the Czech Republic's second city, also has a varied nightlife and has its own opera and ballet venue in the Janáček Theater. Spa resorts such as Karlovy Vary support a lively cultural scene, with a regular program of classical concerts, and a stylish casino.