czech dumplings and slow roasted duck served on a rich gravy

A bank vault turned beer hall, with the recipes to match.

A bank vault turned beer hall, with the recipes to match.

A bank vault turned beer hall, with the recipes to match.

Elevated First-Republic pub food in the exact rooms where Czechoslovak banknotes used to print.

Elevated First-Republic pub food in the exact rooms where Czechoslovak banknotes used to print.

The name translates to "The Printing House," and here that's not a branding flourish, it's a floor plan. The flagship location sits inside the historic complex of the State Printing Works of Security, the Státní tiskárna cenin. The room you're eating in used to be high-security storage for bank paper, and starting in 1928, it was where actual Czechoslovak banknotes were printed.

Chef David Kalina builds the menu around that specific window of history, pulling from cookbooks of the First Czechoslovak Republic, roughly the 1920s and 30s. The goal is reviving upscale comfort food from that era rather than reinventing it, vintage takes on poached eggs and classic sauces made with old-school technique and served alongside properly treated tank Pilsner.

Don't picture white tablecloths. This reads much closer to an elevated gastropub, a refined modern hospoda. The historical research is real and it's serious, but the daily energy is pub energy: tartare, sausages, fried cheese, slow-roasted pork knees, beer poured with real care. It's history you eat with your hands and a pint in front of you.

And the food delivers on that promise. The dumplings are soft and pillowy, sitting in rich sauces cut with tart jam for balance. The meats are slow cooked until tender, then crisped right before they hit the table, which is the kind of small technical step that separates a good pub kitchen from a great one. Nothing here is trying to surprise you. It's trying to feed you well, which is a different and harder thing to pull off consistently.

The room backs that up. Clean and modern without tipping into over-designed, warm rather than sleek, closer to an intimate beer hall than a restaurant trying to make a statement. It's the kind of place built for a beer, a full meal, and good company at the end of a long day, and it does that job as well as anywhere in Prague.

Restaurace Tiskárna is Solid. Don't miss it, but don't fly for it.

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