Food & Beer Culture

Beer from Olomouc is traditionally paired with Olomoucké tvarůžky, the Olomouc curd cheese. This small ripened cheese from Loštice has a powerful aroma, a spicy, tangy flavor, and is often served pickled, either as "nakládaný hermelín" or as "utopenec," a pickled sausage.

It's a perfect match for beer, since bitterness and carbonation cut right through fat and salt. The cheese still comes through strong, without wearing out the palate. Pale lager, with its hop bitterness, is the classic pairing, while a dark lager suits fried or roasted dishes better. Carbonation does its part too: it clears the palate after every bite, so the next one tastes just as vivid as the first.

The classic pairing for roasted dishes is "vepřo-knedlo-zelo": roast pork, dumplings, and sauerkraut. From the Beskids and Wallachia comes "frgál," a large, sweet flatbread cake, best paired with coffee rather than beer.

Beer's true home is the hospoda, the Czech pub. You order at the table, and the server keeps bringing the next glass without asking, unless you mark your beer mat to signal you've had enough. And the gang tends to linger there for hours.

The etiquette there is simple. You toast with "Na zdraví," meaning "To your health," look each other in the eye while doing so, and drink in moderation. In Ostrava, the city of coal and steel, the hospoda is just as much a fixture as it is in the villages of the Haná region. The food served tends to be hearty and simple, and that's precisely why beer remains part of the meal itself, rather than a mere drink on the side.