Budvarka Prague: Meat dishes after a castle visit

Czech Budweiser with meaty bites near Prague Castle (Pražský hrad)

Dobrý den! I’m CULT.
Today I’d like to share a restaurant in Prague that I often visit and personally recommend. It serves a Czech beer called Budweiser. In Korea, Budweiser is known as an American beer, but American Budweiser and Czech Budweiser are two different brands.
Czech Budweiser refers to beer brewed in the Czech region of Budweis in the 13th century, while American Budweiser refers to beer mass-produced and commercialized in America in the 19th century.
The trademark dispute spanning centuries would need a post of its own, so I’ll keep this introduction short 😀

The restaurant is in Dejvická, in the Prague 6 district. District 6 might sound a bit far out.. but it’s about a 10-minute walk from Prague Castle (Pražský hrad). It opens at 11 a.m. and closes at 11 p.m. every day, so travelers can fit a meal in whenever it suits them.

I took this first photo in February.. so it’s very dark even though it’s not quite 7 p.m. ~_~
The restaurant had recently been remodeled, so it looks very neat.

The layout used to be a bit odd.. but now it feels like a normal restaurant. There used to be two sets of stairs on one floor, which got in the way more than you might think.

I’m meeting someone here, and since I arrived early, I’ve ordered a Budweiser while I wait.
Czech Budweiser tastes very different from American Budweiser. American Budweiser is, how should I put it.. along the lines of Cass, Hite or Terra. Czech Budweiser is.. hmm.. how do I describe it..? It just tastes like Czech beer. Pilsner Urquell has a strong, bitter finish that tends to divide Korean women. Czech Budweiser has a smooth, clean finish.. so it rarely divides opinion.
I had six glasses of it that day 😀

These give you an idea of the prices.
It’s a little pricey because this is an affluent neighborhood.

Google Maps lists it as open, and the Budvarka website gives the same daily hours of 11:00–23:00 as this post (checked in November 2026). I found no closure or construction notices. The official Budvarka menu lists Budvar beer at 40 CZK for 0.3 L and 66 CZK for 0.5 L, beef tartare at 319 CZK for 150 g, marinated pork ribs at 315 CZK for 700 g, grilled sausage at 149 CZK for 200 g, and spicy beef goulash at 269 CZK for 180 g. Keep in mind that prices have risen since the 2023 menu photos in this post.

Here are the ribs and tartare.
The ribs are.. the kind you commonly find in Korea too.. and tartare is something like Korean yukhoe. In Korea, it’s mixed with sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic, plum syrup and so on, while in Czechia it’s mixed with ketchup, mustard, sesame seeds, walnuts and so on. Eating raw beef is a Mongolian food tradition that reached both Goryeo and the Holy Roman Empire when Genghis Khan was wreaking havoc around the world. It’s fascinating how it developed differently in places so far apart 😀

This is the raw beef tartare.
I ordered it this way because I have my own perfect mixing ratio.. but if it’s your first time, I recommend asking them to mix it for you when you order. Don’t worry: the server will ask whether you’d like it mixed.

You should eat the tartare with the hard toast served alongside it. The bread is deliberately toasted until hard: rub garlic onto it, then top it with the mixed tartare. It’s so good this way 😀
By the way, Czech garlic has more bite than Korean garlic. Is no one thinking of importing this variety to Korea..?
And another funny thing.. whenever I eat tartare with Czech friends, there’s always garlic left over.. but with Korean friends, we always run out -_-;;

Ta-da~
Just writing about it makes me want to eat it again. You eat the tartare on bread fried until hard. If you don’t dislike raw meat, this is one traditional Czech dish I recommend trying.

Next up are the pork ribs. Budvarka’s ribs have something special that sets them apart from those at other restaurants.
The meat is incredibly tender and comes off the bone so easily, making them very easy to eat. This is another dish I highly recommend. It isn’t a traditional Czech dish, but it is something special to this restaurant 😀

You can pile a ridiculous amount onto your fork like me, (Ah.. I should have wiped the area under the fork before taking the photo..)

Or you can put the meat on toasted baguette slices. The baguette is baked with garlic, so it tastes good on its own too.

The two of us drank eleven glasses of beer that day.
We kept drinking until closing time.. and of course we ran out of food, so we ordered a sausage. It tastes like a sausage from Makro, the Czech equivalent of Costco. In other words, it’s good.

This is roughly what the bill came to by this point. We sat in the same spot drinking away from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. If the place had stayed open past midnight like places in Korea, we probably would have had more than twenty glasses..

And this.. is the goulash I had when I went back to Budvarka yesterday. The people at the next table had been enjoying theirs so much on my previous visit that it stuck in my mind, so I ordered it. Jeff, who lives in Prague, treated me to the meal.. and I’m glad that gives me more chances to come here. Thank you for always treating me.
Anyway, goulash sauce is salty by nature. So you slice the tenderloin and put it on the white bread to eat.

Budvarka’s goulash is definitely in a different league from the goulash at restaurants in the main tourist areas.. Honestly, the goulash in those areas makes me think I could do better myself.. but this one really tasted like something cooked by a chef.
Come to think of it.. I think the goulash here was the best I’ve come across in Prague.

This is the brambroky potato bread that came on the goulash plate. It’s one of my favorite things to eat with beer. This is tasty too 😀
What do you think? It’s worth a visit after a tour of Prague Castle (Pražský hrad). If you’re starting a day of your Prague trip around lunchtime, or finishing up after visiting the castle, I recommend having a meal here. The food is definitely much better than at restaurants in the main tourist areas.