What do people eat in Czechia?
Czechs eat a light bread breakfast, a hot lunch that starts with soup, and meat dishes with dumplings and sauce. Beer is the everyday drink, at about 152 litres per person a year.
Typical dishes and their calories
Breakfast
Breakfast is simple: a rohlík (a long white roll) or rye bread with butter, ham, cheese or a spread, with coffee or tea, mostly eaten at home before 8:00. At the weekend there may be eggs or a sweet koláč from the bakery. Two buttered rohlíky with ham come to about 350 kcal.
Lunch
Lunch, between 11:00 and 13:00, is the main hot meal. Pubs and canteens offer a polední menu, a cheap daily lunch with a few set dishes, and it nearly always starts with soup, such as garlic česnečka or potato bramboračka. Then comes meat with dumplings, potatoes or rice. Soup and a main easily reach 900 kcal.
Dinner
If lunch was hot, dinner is often lighter: bread with cheese, ham and pickles, or leftovers, around 18:00. For a family meal out it is svíčková, beef in a creamy root vegetable sauce with bread dumplings, cranberries and whipped cream, about 650 kcal a plate, or vepřo knedlo zelo, roast pork with dumplings and sauerkraut.
Starters
In a pub the snacks come with the beer: utopenci (sausages pickled in vinegar with onion), nakládaný hermelín (a soft cheese marinated in oil and spices) and tatarák, raw beef tartare on fried bread rubbed with garlic. At parties there are chlebíčky, small open sandwiches with ham, egg and potato salad, about 180 kcal each.
Desserts
Sweets are mostly baked: koláče with poppy seed, plum jam or sweet curd cheese, buchty (yeast buns) and apple štrúdl. Fruit dumplings, ovocné knedlíky filled with plums or apricots and topped with curd, sugar and melted butter, are eaten as a main course, not after one. A koláč is about 250 kcal.
Drinks
Beer is the national drink. Czechs drink about 152 litres per person a year, the most in the world for over thirty years, mostly pale lager in the style first brewed in Plzeň in 1842. A half litre is about 215 kcal. Kofola, a herbal cola, Becherovka liqueur and Moravian wine are also everywhere.
Street food
Street food means a klobása (grilled sausage) with mustard and bread from a stand, smažený sýr (fried cheese) in a bun with tartar sauce, and bramboráky, garlicky potato pancakes. In Prague, trdelník, dough rolled on a spit and baked, is sold mainly to visitors. A portion of fried cheese is about 500 kcal before the sauce.
Normal there, odd elsewhere
On 24 December Czechs eat fried carp with potato salad, and some families keep the live carp in the bathtub for a day or two first. Sweet plum dumplings count as lunch. And a half litre of beer often costs about as much as a soft drink, so a beer with lunch on a workday is normal.