What to Eat in Czechia in 2026: The Best Food and Drink

Czech food is a pub kitchen cuisine that achieves something remarkable: the combination of svíčková (beef sirloin slow-braised in cream sauce with vegetables, served with bread dumplings and cranberry sauce — a sweet-sour-savoury combination that shouldn't work but absolutely does), goulash (slow-cooked beef or pork in paprika sauce, served with bread dumplings), and smažený sýr (breaded and deep-fried cheese, a Czech innovation that requires cold beer to complete) forms the core of a cuisine built for the specific pleasures of a beer hall evening. Czech pilsner — Pilsner Urquell from Plzeň (the world's first golden lager, invented 1842) and Budvar from České Budějovice — is the beer culture that the rest of the world has been imitating since 1842. The Lokál and Kolkovna pub groups in Prague pour tank-fresh unpasteurised Pilsner Urquell with the creamy mlíko (milk pour) head that is the Czech standard and that exported beer cannot replicate. Czech trdelník (the chimney cake, a Prague tourist staple of uncertain historic credentials) and svíčková na smetaně (the braised beef) are the poles of Czech food culture. That's where it gets good.