One of the great things about Statcounter.com is that as well as giving an overview of site traffic per day, visitor paths, keyword analysis etc etc, it also shows from which countries readers have visited your blog.

I initially assumed any readership that ‘Knedliky Etc’ managed to muster would be pretty much exclusively based in the Czech Republic, with the occasional UK IP from when my faithful mum and dad stop by to catch up on my culinary (mis)adventures.

In fact to my own surprise, only two thirds of my traffic in the event comes from the Czech Republic – the other third is made up by the UK and the US (about 20%), while the remainder of visitors hail from literally all over the world – I’ve had hits from as far-flung places as Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Uganda, Yemen, Denmark and Qatar, among others. I also seem to have attracted a small but loyal following in Latvia, for some reason.

It is a source of constant mystification to me how, out of all the pages on the world wide web, such visitors end up on ‘Knedliky Etc’ of all sites. Are they prospective tourists investigating dining possibilities for an impending trip? Former residents / expats simply taking a trip down memory lane? Or did they simply Google “sexy Czech babes food fetish” and somehow (much to their own disappointment, presumably) end up with me...?

Going on the assumption then that up to 25% of my readership may not be familiar with the Czech Republic, I thought I’d put together a quick rundown of a few decent budget places to go on the Prague tourist trail in the hope that it might help any future visitors avoid the usual tourist traps in the Old Town / Castle / Muzeum area. Neither list is comprehensive by any means, and additional recommendations for further culinary diamonds in the rough are, of course, always welcome!

The below are primarily recommended with brunch / lunch / coffee stops while on the sightseeing trail in mind – further recommendations in terms of evening wining and dining options around town can be found on my Prague Top Ten entry.

Sorry to regular readers to keep banging on about this place, but I just love it so very very much... Not the cheapest bakery-café in Prague, but definitely one of the best and just a stone’s throw from Old Town Square to boot. My previous reviews / further photos of the place can be found here and here.

“There are no facts, only interpretations” - Friedrich Nietzsche

As my blog mission statement is at pains to point out, I’m just a long-standing Prague expat who loves wining and dining. A lot. Culinary / literally / photographically speaking I’m by no means an expert – I just happen to photograph my food and type up an irreverent account of my dining experiences afterwards.

That said, for what it’s worth I thought I’d give a quick run of my personal gastronomic favourites in Prague – it’s been tough confining it to a top ten, but (in reverse order) here we go:

Like many self-made men of humble Black Country origins, my dad has never quite been able to break the habit of constant economizing, even long after such dedicated thriftiness ceased to be a pressing financial necessity. However, since his retirement last year and recent discovery of cut-price supermarkets Aldi and Lidl in the UK, this habit of a lifetime has now developed into full-blown bargain-hunting obsession – strangely enough at just the time in life that he is sitting on more ready cash / assets than ever before. In fact it is by no means unusual for me to receive random long-distance calls informing me (rather pointlessly, one might think) that he’s just bought a hundred potatoes for 5p from Aldi, or purchased a new MP3 player from Lidl for just £3.99 - exactly like an i-pod in fact except that everything’s in Chinese, and would I like one for Christmas…??

For better or worse, I too seem to have inherited the traditional Knedlik tightwad gene (we prefer the term “cautious”) – though thankfully not quite to the same obsessive extent. Nevertheless, today I duly decided to bypass the posh delis and speciality food shops (all been done anyway) in search of any bog-standard culinary bargains I could bag at the Na Slupi branch of Lidl in Prague.

With the majority of its clientèle presumably skimping on the food costs in order to fund an unhealthy booze habit, the entrance to this particular branch of Lidl logically leads directly into the alcohol section. Conforming to demographic here, this was also where my first and best deal of the day was to be found – a six pack of 2009 medium-dry German Riesling marked down from an already pretty cheap 359kč to a bargain 240kč. Technically speaking, the cheapest wine sold at Albert (for blogging purposes my sole point of comparison here) matches this price at 40kč a bottle, but then again that is essentially for glorified paint-stripper – comparing like for like I’m going to guesstimate that I’ve made a saving of 20kč a bottle here. Still not the best quality wine in the world maybe, but it will get both Mr K and I through the working week…

Moving on into the food section, I didn’t find much in the way of fresh produce or brand names, but mainly just basic long-life items stacked cheap and high. Of the more “quality” items on offer were a 500ml bottle of Italian olive oil at 99kč (nearest Albert equivalent 145kč), a 500ml bottle of my beloved balsamic vinegar at 30kč (a steal in comparison to Albert’s 87kč offer for half the amount), red and green pesto at 30kč per jar (as opposed to 70kč each at Albert), a pack of Tchibo coffee at 60kč (only marginal differential here of 17kč) and my favourite block of Ritter Sport milk chocolate (not available at Albert when I went, so can’t compare prices here). Total savings on the “luxuries” – 200kč.

The difference for more basic items wasn’t as great, however, with me saving only 2kč on a 2kg bag of potatoes, 3kč on a carton of milk, and spaghetti at 7kč costing pretty much about the same.

In total the food bill came to 543kč, with savings of approximately 300 odd crowns in comparison to a standard Albert shop. Which I reasoned I could then spend (and more) on a pair of Lidl 359kč beige curtains – not particularly relevant to a food-related blog I know, but I’ve done without for two years in my apartment and (clearly true to family form!) I feel a good bargain should never go unshared… ;-))

It was one of those balmy summer’s evenings we’ve been having lately, and a newly-betrothed Mr K and I were trying to decide on another place for outdoor eats that wasn’t too touristy / expensive on the one hand or over-crowded / located right next to a busy main road etc on the other.

In the event we hit upon Rezavá Kotva, a semi-outdoor restaurant situated on Dětský ostrov. I’d been there once before with my colleagues, and remembered really enjoying the tapas there.



And so off we headed later that night, starting off the meal with a carafe of 2005 Australian Chardonnay at 149kč for 0,5l. All good here.


We had a flick through the rest of the menu, which mainly consisted of grilled meat dishes and tempting BBQ / seafood platters for two, but in the end settled for our first choice of tapas again.

It was late in the evening and we were both absolutely ravenous, so decided to go the whole hog and order the 18-dish tapas menu at 439kč to share. They also have smaller set tapas menus consisting of six dishes for 149kč or twelve for 289kč for the slightly less greedy of you out there.

As for the Tapas 18 menu, this consisted of (deep breath…) marinated salmon with olive oil and green pepper, marinated bocconcini with dried tomatoes, shrimps in spicy sauce, grilled eggplant with pieces of goat cheese, marinated plums in bacon, stuffed wine leaves with rice, fried jalapeňos peppers stuffed with cheddar cheese, olives marinated in herbs, fried squid in batter, marinated mushrooms of Andalusia, roasted peppers, chorizo sausage with capers, cheese tapenade with grissini, meatballs with spicy bean salsa, avocado with anchovies and pine nuts, jamón serano ham with melon, zucchini stuffed with garlic gervais, and last but not least marinated cheese with nuts and peppers.

This is it in all its glory:




I am very ashamed to say that between the two of us we quite easily polished off the lot. Each dish was quite small, so at the time it didn’t seem too much, but looking back at the photos now I retrospectively see that was actually rather a lot… Oh well, too late for feeling guilty on that front now.

Of all the dishes, I particularly liked all the roast vegetables, the stuffed wine leaves with rice, and meatballs with spicy bean salsa. The only one out of the eighteen I wasn’t particularly keen on was the cheese tapenade with grissini, which effectively just consisted of a tub of Dairy Lee-like cheese with broken breadsticks sticking inelegantly out of it.

The tapas also came served with lovely fresh ciabatta bread, of which we’d eaten the majority before taking a photo of the not-quite-so-attractive stumps – oops.


I think my attention to duty must have been waning by this point (read: we’d gotten through another carafe), as we also accidentally started on our shared dessert before I suddenly remembered to grab a not-very-good pic – how we were still hungry after all that tapas I really don’t know…


Either way, I do remember the cheesecake (49kč) as seriously brilliant, so clearly we somehow found the room...

All included the total bill came to 786kč, which we both thought was pretty good value for the sheer variety, quality and not least quantity of food we’d put away between us that evening. Add in decent service, relaxed atmosphere and beautiful summer’s night, and I think Rezavá Kotva might just be a new joint Knedliky fave… :-)))

O... M... F... G...

If I thought Mr Knedlik had outdone himself in pulling off previous regimental dinners at the Houses of Parliament and Tower of London last year, his surprise production of two tickets to the Queen’s Garden Party at Buckingham Palace this July had me proven well and truly wrong here.

A traditionalist Mr K deemed all my current dresses too "young" / "trendy" / "far above the knee" for the occasion, so once again I was reluctantly dispatched to purchase something more duly "respectable". Well, what could be more respectable than traditional mothers' choice Marks & Spencers, time-honoured pinnacle of English middle-class propriety...? Luckily I bought from the Per Una range, which even at M&S is more fashionable than frumpy – I for one was just relieved to find I’m still size 8 (or 34 in European) despite all the frantic food blogging of late, a feat only achieved by compensating increased calorie intake with epic 100-length swims most days per week. Mr K by comparison had it easy – he just had to don his uniform as usual...

Strictly speaking, I wasn’t supposed to take photos of any of the Buckingham Palace Gardens / grounds / tea tents etc due to “security reasons”, but of course I couldn’t resist the opportunity to sneak a few pics of the oh-so-traditional English cucumber sandwiches (crustless of course), diddy slices of Victoria sponge, and mini scones with jam etc etc.

Sad to say, but in many ways I vehemently hate the “Broken Britain” of today.

It looks posh, but what you don’t see is that there is actually a modern, bog-standard canteen just to the side of it – the only times you get proper waiter service / actual decent food there is for things like Graduation / Matriculation Dinners or Formal Halls. In this case, Mr K went for the decidedly more cheap-and-cheerful Great British fry-up, with me as usual opting for the healthier salad cart option – total cost £6.30.

After lunch, we then drove out to the nearby Chilford Hall, one of 178 vineyards currently operating in the UK. We had a joint English wine-tasting tour booked here (a present from Mummy K last Christmas), which basically involved an escorted walk round the vines, an explanation of how the wine was produced (lost on me) and finally a tasting of six of their wine varieties – largely Dornfelder, Müller Thurgau, and other grapes that grow well in a cooler climate.

... before finally rounding off the day with that most revered of all British cuisine – a decent curry! :-))))