In traditional Czech cuisine, thick soups and many kinds of sauces, both based on stewed or cooked vegetables and meats, often with cream, as well as baked meats with natural sauces (gravies), are popular dishes. In Czechia, the meal typically consists of two or more courses; the first course is traditionally soup, the second course is the main dish, and the third course (sometimes) is the dessert.  

 

It is difficult to accumulate here varieties of the cuisine of Czechia, thus, only some selection of the most popular:

 

The most popular main dishes in Czechia are roast pork with dumplings and cabbage, which is often considered the most typical Czech national dish. Another one is beef sirloin on cream - marinated sirloin, braised beef, usually larded, with a “svíčková” sauce - a thick sauce of carrot, parsley root, celeriac with cream. This dish is often served with dumplings, cranberries, and lemon.

 

To the other most popular dishes belong Czech guláš - a stew usually made from beef, pork or game with onions and spices; smoked meat (uzené) with potato dumplings, fried onion, and cooked spinach; fried cuttings (pork or chicken) with potato salad; meatloaf with potatoes, beef with tomato sauce, dill sauce and many other kinds of sauces is often on menus too, roast chicken, goose, duck, pheasant (served with breaded or not breaded or potato dumplings and braised red cabbage), etc.

From game, deer, roe, fallow deer, hare, from fishes is the most common trout or carp (Christmas eve traditional food). It is necessary to mention the popularity of mushrooms in the Czech cuisine (including the passion for their collecting) in various sauces, soups, incl.pickled mushrooms. Also fried cheese with potatoes is very popular.

 

Various kinds of dumplings are the most popular side dishes in Czechia. They can be breaded, not breaded, potato and filled dumplings, including sweet filled dumplings with fruits - the most popular are plum or strawberry dumplings with cottage cheese, butter, and sugar.

 

An important role has soups. They are many kinds of soups: beef, chicken or vegetable broth with noodles, liver or nutmeg dumplings, potato soup in many local varieties (e.g. Kulajda is a traditional soup containing cream, spices, mushrooms, egg (often a quail's egg), dill and potatoes or kyselo, made from rye sourdough, mushrooms, caraway, and fried onion. Garlic soup (česnečka), served in the restaurant as some others in the loaf of bread, cabbage soup, pea, bean, lentil soup, goulash soup, pork tripe soup, tomato, mushroom, onion soups cannot be forgotten.

 

Original snacks of the Czech cuisine are above all pastries (salty and sweet as “rohlíky”, “koláče” & “buchty”), Czech potato pancakes, Czech finger sandwiches, Prague ham: a type of brine-cured, stewed, and mildly beechwood-smoked pork boneless ham, Shpikachki (špekáčky) - type of sausage, made from finely cured mixture of pork and beef with smoked bacon, pickled sausages (called “utopenci”, which means “drowned”- picture) and fishes (“zavináče”), cheeses and vegetables (well known Znojmo pickled cucumbers), beer cheese, ripened cheeses (well known “Olomoucké tvarůžky” etc.).

 

Drinks to eat: almost inherent beverage in Czechia is beer, but also Moravian (South-Eastern part of Czechia) wines.