Výčep Restaurant: Chef Jiří Hrachový
When a Czech says "výčep", they mean the bottom rung of the pub hierarchy - a taproom where beer is poured and the kitchen goes no further than a jar of pickled cheese. The place that hung this word above its door on Korunní Street does the exact opposite, and does it so well that it made it into the Michelin Guide. Výčep Restaurant in Prague's Vinohrady is my go-to answer to the question of where to go for lunch in Prague. I keep going back, and every time I run into the same problem: their take on Czech cuisine keeps wrecking my personal rankings. The best beef broth of my life? From here. The best choux ring? That too.
A Chef Who Went Through the Foreign Legion
The kitchen is run by Jiří Hrachový, and his road to the stove was unusually winding by Czech standards. He comes from Frenštát pod Radhoštěm in eastern Moravia and grew up around food: his grandparents ran a pub and his mother worked as a waitress. He trained as a cook, but at eighteen he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion - he was given a new identity, Adam Gascoe, and right at the start a warning: "Be prepared to get shot." He never finished basic training and left of his own accord; today he openly admits he wasn't ready for how tough it was.
He then worked his way back into cooking from the bottom up: five years in English kitchens, starting as a dishwasher in Eastbourne, sixteen- to eighteen-hour shifts and the nickname Chicharito, after the Mexican soccer player. He returned home with his craft honed by stints in Michelin kitchens, and in December 2018 he opened Výčep with Vojta Nemrava; today it belongs to the Kolektiv restaurant group. Forbes summed up the confusion around the name at the time with the headline "Fine dining instead of a cheap Vinohrady pub".
One line from his interviews sums up his philosophy: "We should be able to make everything on our menu ourselves." So Výčep makes its own bread, cheeses, hams, butter, sodas and fruit brandies, and the sauerkraut is trodden in big barrels - the interns learn this eastern Moravian classic literally with their feet. He never calls buckwheat anything but "eastern Moravian rice": he turns it into croquettes with mushrooms and truffle mayonnaise, adds it to bread, and can tell good buckwheat at a glance - it's green and it smells wonderful. On one of my visits I caught sight of him walking through the dining room with a smile. That's exactly how his food comes across to me, too.
What I Ate at Výčep
I wrote up my first lunch in a separate article. I came for the house-made jitrnice, our pork liver sausage, with fermented wild garlic - as a small boy I helped out at home pig slaughters, and jitrnice is a dish close to my heart - and the one from Korunní was magnificent. But the beef broth with a liver dumpling, buckwheat and a mound of fresh herbs turned out to be the best broth I've ever eaten. And the choux ring with vanilla and caramel cream knocked every choux ring of my life off its throne - and I've had more than a few.
Another visit proved it was no fluke: kulajda, the Czech mushroom-and-dill soup, made with porcini and truffle oil, Slovak halušky, little potato dumplings, baked in lard with sheep's bryndza and smoked cracklings, and beef shoulder bourguignon, a classic of French cuisine, with the shoulder falling apart in my mouth. I love mashed potatoes and I know how much can go wrong with them - these were superb. And the strawberry sundae came crowned with a Štramberk ear, a crisp Moravian gingerbread cone planted in a Prague sundae.
On my next visit I fell for a mouflon jitrnice baked in lard with marjoram sauce and mashed potatoes - a superb cousin of the wild garlic one and every bit its equal. The grilled asparagus with pickled quail eggs and hollandaise sauce was excellent and reminded me that Výčep's range goes well beyond the pig-slaughter repertoire. I've also tried the wild boar broth, a schnitzel with mashed potatoes and cucumber salad, and the buckwheat - eastern Moravian rice straight from the source.
A Weekly Menu and a TV That Shows Cooking
The lunch menu changes every week - one soup, around six mains and a single dessert; in the evening the menu gets more ambitious. On tap you'll find an eleven- and a thirteen-degree beer (measured by the Czech scale of original gravity) from Dalešice, the brewery made famous by the film Cutting It Short. At lunchtime the room fills up without fail and you're out of luck without a reservation - thankfully the online system confirms one almost instantly. And sit where you can see the old Tesla television at the back: it doesn't show sports but a live feed from the pass, where the plates get their finishing touches a few meters away from you. I could watch it out of the corner of my eye all evening. You'll find the current menu on the restaurant's website.
Výčep holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand - the award for places where you eat superbly and pay sensibly - which puts it on the Czech Michelin list (as of September 13, 2026).
One of my greatest wishes is to experience a home pig slaughter one more time, and it hasn't happened yet. Until it does, I'll keep coming back to Korunní to relive it - and I recommend you do the same. Care for a taste?
Výčep Restaurant, Prague (2): Kulajda, Halušky and Beef Bourguignon
A second lunch at Výčep Restaurant in Prague's Vinohrady: kulajda with truffle oil, Slovak halušky with cracklings, beef bourguignon and a strawberry sundae with a Štramberk ear on top. Plus an old Tesla television set at the back that runs a live feed from the kitchen instead of the usual programming. The verdict from my first visit still stands - a knockout.
Výčep Restaurant, Prague: Jiří Hrachový's Eastern Moravian Cooking in Vinohrady
Výčep Restaurant in Prague's Vinohrady borrowed its name from the bottom rung of the Czech pub hierarchy - and then cooks eastern Moravian food under it that has earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand. Head chef Jiří Hrachový cooks from the recipes of the grandmothers of his home region, and whatever can be made in house is made in house: bread, cheese and cured meats.