Czech Breakfast: What Czechs Eat in the Morning and How to Order It

What Czech breakfast usually looks like

At home, the morning plate is assembled rather than cooked: sliced bread or rolls, butter, a soft cheese or sliced cheese, ham or salami, and something sweet such as jam or honey, with coffee or tea. For a historical comparison from a Czech-heritage family in Texas, Robert Skrabanek's account of a 1920s Snook, Texas, breakfast shows a heavier cooked table — fried eggs, bacon or ham, honey or syrup, and homemade bread with butter served together.

Savory and sweet sit on the same plate, which surprises some visitors. A slice of bread with ham and cheese next to one with jam is normal, and nobody treats the combination as odd. Order eggs and a sweet pastry at a café breakfast and you will see the same logic on the menu.

The heavy cooked dishes come later in the day. Svíčková na Smetaně, beef in cream sauce with dumplings, is a lunch or dinner plate, not a breakfast one, so do not expect to find it on a morning menu.

The bakery staples to recognize: rohlík, chlebíček and sweet buns

The rohlík is the everyday Czech roll, and it is what a bakery breakfast is built around: you buy it at a bakery counter or a supermarket rack, then add butter and cheese or ham rather than eating it plain. Taste of Prague treats this kind of quick roll-and-coffee stop as a different purchase from a sit-down café breakfast.

A chlebíček is an open-faced sandwich on a slice of bread, topped with potato salad, ham, egg or cheese. It is a deli-counter item rather than a bakery one, which is why you find it in food shops and cafés rather than bread aisles. The Czech food pages cover it in more detail alongside the wider larder of breads and dumplings.

Sweet buns turn up on café breakfast menus as the sweet option. Taste of Prague singles out the Czech sweets, sweet buns or kolachees, at Café Lounge as the pick for a sweet breakfast, and rates the pastries held in the cooler below the fresh ones.

Sweet and savory: koláče and other Czech sweets at breakfast

Koláče are the sweet pastries you meet on café breakfast menus as the sweet option. At breakfast they work as the sweet course, eaten with coffee alongside a savory plate rather than instead of one. Taste of Prague singles out Czech sweets, sweet buns or kolachees, at Café Lounge for a sweet breakfast, and a bakery counter is the easy way to try one without a full sit-down meal.

The same sweet register runs through filled buns and poppy-seed pastries, and a bakery breakfast is the easiest way to try two or three kinds without committing to a full sit-down meal.

How breakfast works in Czech cafés and how to order it

Czech cafés split breakfast between fixed sets and à la carte choices. A breakfast set is a fixed plate, often eggs plus bread, ham, cheese and a drink, and it is often the better value if you want a full meal; Café Imperial, a hotel restaurant, offers a breakfast buffet and breakfast sets in addition to à la carte choices.

Order at the table and expect the bill at the end rather than a counter queue. Coffee comes as espresso or a larger milk drink; drip coffee and pour-over belong to specialty cafés such as Můj šálek kávy, which serves house-roasted beans as espresso and drip and offers a tasting set of three drips.

Ordering is straightforward: point at the set you want and say the number, which is perfectly acceptable when the café is busy, and ask for an English menu if you want one rather than assuming it is offered. At Café Lounge, fresh juices and a wide tea selection are there for non-coffee drinkers.

A sit-down café breakfast: what the Prague spots serve

Café Savoy is the classic choice near the center, an art deco room with high ceilings and a bakery downstairs. Taste of Prague recommends booking ahead for weekend mornings and points to the French toast, the croissant with apricot marmalade, baked brioche with ham and Gruyère and a poached egg, and the scrambled eggs.

Café Lounge, just a few steps off Café Savoy, is the coffee-first option. Its breakfast list runs from sausages and scrambled eggs to ham and eggs and Bircher muesli, and there is a build-your-own breakfast set called the Hunger Wall; the garden is the reason to choose it in warm weather.

Home Kitchen is the small room: two communal tables, a short menu of eggs, pancakes and bread with toppings, and a daily soup. It suits an early start and a quiet sit-down rather than a long brunch.

Pasta Caffé is the value pick, with breakfast sets built from good-quality components, though the crowd is a mixed bag of businessmen and minor celebrities. Café Imperial is the grand historic room with tiled walls, better for a buffet or a set than for a quick stop.

Quick morning pastries versus a full brunch

A bakery breakfast and a brunch are different purchases. The bakery stop is a roll or pastry and a coffee eaten standing or on a bench, and it fits a morning when you want to be at a castle or a square before the crowds. The brunch is a booked table, a multi-course menu and an hour or more.

Prague's brunch scene has widened well beyond eggs. Štangl in Karlín serves a three-course seasonal menu that starts with cheeses, pâtés and garden vegetables and moves to eggs, porridge or fire-grilled meats, with specialty coffee and fermented lemonades; Dos Mundos in Vinohrady pairs Turkish eggs or pancakes with flat whites and V60 pour-overs.

Some brunches go further and become an event. Hard Rock Café prices its weekend bottomless brunch at CZK 950 per person with cocktails for 90 minutes, which sits at the top of the range rather than representing a typical Czech breakfast spend.

If you want the Czech sweet side of breakfast without a sit-down menu, a Trdelník from a street stall covers the pastry craving, though it is a fairground item rather than a household one.

Coffee culture and the specialty roasters behind it

Prague's café coffee has moved well past the standard automatic machine. Můj šálek kávy roasts its beans in-house and sends them out as espresso drinks and drips, and the home-made lemonades and cakes give you a reason to stay past the first cup.

Roaster-driven cafés build the breakfast around the cup, so pick the café for its roaster rather than its view. Dos Mundos founders source beans directly from farmers, which is why the pour-over list is worth reading before you order food.

Where to find these spots in Prague: Karlín, Vinohrady and the center

Karlín, east of the center, holds Můj šálek kávy and Štangl. The district has been through a dramatic renewal since the 2002 floods, and it is a natural breakfast stop if your day heads east or you are staying in the district.

Vinohrady is the brunch district: Dos Mundos, Aleb Kitchen & Bar and The Tavern all sit in the neighborhood, and The Tavern has a summer terrace overlooking Riegrovy sady park. Monolok, also in Vinohrady, is the quieter café off the main drag.

The center clusters around Café Savoy, with Café Lounge just a few steps away, and Café Imperial and Pasta Caffé nearby; Pasta Caffé also has a branch on Vodičkova near Wenceslas Square with a nearly identical menu. Breakfast there fits a morning before a train out of the city. For the open-faced sandwiches sold in delis here, see our guide to chlebíčky.

Monkey Bar near the main train station serves its Jungle Brunch through the week, which makes it the practical option on a departure morning when you need to be close to the platform.

What to skip and small ordering mistakes

The most common mistake is treating the pastry case as the best of the bakery. Taste of Prague rates the cooled pastries at Café Lounge below the fresh options, so ask what came out of the oven that morning instead of taking what looks prettiest.

Do not assume tap water comes with the coffee. Home Kitchen, for example, does not serve it, and ordering a bottle or a lemonade is the normal move.

Avoid judging Czech breakfast against a full English or American cooked plate. It is a lighter, bread-led meal, and benchmarking it against bacon and beans leads you to the wrong venues for the wrong reasons.

Prices and paying: what to expect in CZK

Prices are in Czech koruna and vary enormously between a bakery roll and a hotel brunch. Hard Rock Café's weekend bottomless brunch is listed at CZK 950 per person with 90 minutes of cocktails, which shows the top of the range rather than a normal morning spend.

Bakery counters and smaller cafés are worth carrying a little cash for, and a small note and a few coins keep a roll and a coffee from turning into a search for an ATM. Read the menu board before you order so you know the total.

Menu prices are listed in koruna, so read the board before you order and you will know the total. Leaving a small tip at a sit-down breakfast is a courtesy, not a rule.

Pick your breakfast before you pick your route

Choose the bakery stop if the morning belongs to a castle, a square or a train, and choose the café breakfast if you want eggs, a proper coffee and an hour at the table. In Prague, Karlín and Vinohrady reward the sit-down choice; the center suits a quick stop before you move on.

For the rest of the day's eating, from dumplings to Svíčková na Smetaně, the Czech Food pages cover what to order at lunch and dinner.