Le Marché: A Tasting-Menu Restaurant in Karlovy Vary
Le Marché is a tasting-menu restaurant on the bank of the Teplá river in Karlovy Vary - about ten tables and a menu that changes every day, depending on what the market had to offer that morning.
A Chef Trained at Boulud and a Menu Set by the Market
The name is borrowed from French and it is more of a working description than poetry: le marché means market. The menu here isn't written for a season but for a single day - whatever the suppliers deliver in the morning is what gets cooked, and if you fall for one particular dish, you had better say your goodbyes right away. The kitchen is run by chef Jan Krajč: he trained a few hundred meters from here at the Grandhotel Pupp, worked in kitchens in Germany and Austria, and did a stage at Daniel in New York under the French star Daniel Boulud. Not even the restaurant's website says exactly when he opened his own place in Karlovy Vary; what is certain is that he has been cooking there for more than ten years.
Hunting for a Restaurant in a Tourist Town
Along with Český Krumlov, Karlovy Vary is probably the most touristy place in the country - more than half of the region's visitors are foreigners - and finding somewhere that doesn't cook purely for people passing through once takes patience here. In Krumlov, Vrátnice Restaurant once solved that for me (it has closed since - note from September 2026); in Karlovy Vary, after a long search, I settled on Le Marché.
There are about ten tables, so booking a day or two ahead isn't overcautious - it's more like your ticket in. Lunch runs from noon to three, dinner from half past five.
A Wafer and a Spring for the Road
Eating in Karlovy Vary comes with one more course, one that happens outdoors and never lands on any kitchen's bill: a warm spa wafer from a hatch and a taste of the mineral springs. The town has eighty-one of them and fifteen you can fill your cup from for free. In spring, my favorite was the Svoboda spring: it flows in a wooden pavilion from 1865 next to Lázně III, comes out at 61.7 degrees and was named after Emperor Franz Joseph I - it has only been Svoboda, the Freedom Spring, since 1946. In Karlovy Vary you can learn your history from the little signs on the springs.
A Full Dining Room on Mariánskolázeňská
I went to Le Marché for lunch on the first day the weather promised spring and the sun made you want to be outside. Over lunch every table was taken; anyone arriving without a reservation wouldn't have stood a chance. The cream of root vegetable soup was thick and properly made, the toasted bread croutons that came with it had a proper crunch, and the way the soup was served already told you that the lunch menu here isn't treated as a necessary evil. The sea bream with mashed potatoes and cucumber salad was just as good: the fish was cooked beautifully and the mash - which I love and therefore judge harshly - didn't let me down. The still-warm brioche with fruit at the end looked as good as it tasted and I'd have ordered it again straight away; except that by the next day it's usually off the menu. The lunch menu cost 520 CZK (21 EUR).
Restaurace Le Marché
