Cheap Eats in Prague: Five Budget Lunch Stops

Prague’s canteens, sandwich counters and noodle soups offer several ways to keep lunch inexpensive. Havelská Koruna offers a Czech canteen lunch, while Sisters Bistro makes a smaller bite out of carefully topped sandwiches. The other choices take you to a butcher’s counter on Dlouhá, a weekday cafeteria in Těšnov and a seated noodle-soup lunch in Vinohrady.

Choose by appetite as well as price: a sandwich or a modest meatloaf order is not the same amount of food as a main with an accompaniment or a bowl of beef noodle soup.

Budget lunches and quick bites

Venue	Area	What to order	Typical food spend per person	Weekly closing day
Havelská Koruna	Old Town	Czech goulash with dumplings	180–280 Kč; main and dumplings	None
Sisters Bistro	Old Town, Dlouhá	Avocado-and-prosciutto sandwich	80–200 Kč; one or two sandwiches	None
Naše maso	Old Town, Dlouhá	Meatloaf with bread	120–220 Kč; modest to larger order	Sunday (kitchen)
Lidová jídelna Těšnov	Těšnov, New Town	—	150–230 Kč; daily main and accompaniment	Saturday and Sunday
Pho Vietnam, Anglická	Vinohrady	Beef noodle soup	200–300 Kč; bowl only	None

Allow up to 300 Kč per person for the selected food orders, not for drinks and several extras. The smaller orders at Sisters Bistro and Naše maso suit a quick bite, while the canteen mains and soup bowl are the more substantial lunches. These ranges are planning estimates, with the upper end allowing for a larger order rather than a set-menu price.

To eat cheaply, start with counter meals and weekday lunch menus. Read the day’s choices before ordering, and establish whether the accompaniment is included or chosen separately. A soup, extra side, coffee or beer can turn a modest food bill into a noticeably bigger total.

Walk in for the counter-style stops rather than planning a reserved lunch table. At a sit-down restaurant, arranging a table is more useful if your group needs to eat together at a particular time.

For a substantial meal without meat, vegetarian meals in Prague offer a better starting point than adapting the meat-led orders here.

Havelská Koruna

At Havelská Koruna, look for Czech goulash with dumplings for a filling lunch. It appears among the rotating dishes, so choose from the day’s selection rather than expecting every dish to be available on every visit. Czech goulash is usually a beef stew with an onion-rich sauce. The dumplings make it a substantial plate and give you something to eat with the sauce.

The self-service format lets you choose the food before settling down to eat. Take a paper order slip at the entrance and keep it with you as you move between the counters. Pointing to a dish is useful if its Czech name is unfamiliar. Staff record each choice on the slip, including anything else you add.

Keep the slip until you pay at the exit. You take your food to a seat first, then settle the whole bill as you leave. This is different from paying for a tray before sitting down: keeping all your choices on the same slip is part of the meal’s routine.

Sisters Bistro

Sisters Bistro on Dlouhá specialises in chlebíčky, Czech open-faced sandwiches. Choose the avocado-and-prosciutto sandwich for a small lunch or quick bite. Its toppings include avocado spread, fresh cheese, prosciutto and pomegranate, so this is not a meat-free avocado sandwich.

An open-faced sandwich is a topped slice of bread rather than a closed sandwich. One makes a modest bite, while choosing a second gives you a larger order and moves your spend towards the upper end of the table’s range. Decide how hungry you are before adding more, particularly if you also want a drink.

The topping combinations give Sisters its reason to stop: the cheese-salad option pairs Hermelín, a Czech soft-ripened cheese, with cranberries and leaves, while roast beef comes with celery remoulade and horseradish. These offer different flavours without turning the visit into a full hot lunch. Choose individual sandwiches, with the avocado-and-prosciutto version as the starting order rather than an obligation to buy a mixed selection.

Naše maso

Naše maso on Dlouhá is a useful stop when you want a straightforward meat-based bite: order sekaná, Czech meatloaf, with bread. Meatloaf is usually made from seasoned minced meat, baked and sliced. Here the bread accompaniment keeps the order simpler than a plated meal with several sides. The photograph shows a different serving of the dish, with sauce.

Ready-to-eat dishes come from the kitchen inside the butcher shop. Order food to eat now, rather than treating the meat display as a restaurant menu. A modest meatloaf order suits a quick lunch, but your appetite and the amount you choose matter more than the label ‘lunch’.

Be prepared to eat at the standing counter. There are also a few small tables, but seating is limited. This makes the stop better suited to a brief meal than a lunch where everyone in a group needs a comfortable seat.

Lidová jídelna Těšnov

Lidová jídelna Těšnov is a weekday lunch choice built around a changing Czech menu. Choose a daily main with an accompaniment, rather than arriving with a fixed dish in mind. Roast pork with dumplings and sauerkraut is not on the current menu, so that particular order should not be the reason for your visit.

The English-language menu helps you understand the dishes before joining the cafeteria line. Read the main and its accompaniments together: choosing a side you want to eat with the dish is what makes this a filling lunch, rather than simply ordering the cheapest item.

Take a tray, choose your main at the counter, then select an accompaniment and any drink before paying at the end of the line. You can point to the menu when ordering. Payment comes before you settle down with your tray, so keep everything you want together through the line.

After lunch, you can take a break in nearby Park Těšnov, a green space in New Town.

Pho Vietnam on Anglická

Pho Vietnam on Anglická offers a seated lunch centred on phở bò, Vietnamese beef noodle soup. This Vinohrady branch suits an occasion when you want to sit down over a bowl rather than eat a small counter order.

The soup usually combines beef broth, rice noodles and beef, with herbs and seasonings adding freshness and flavour. The noodles make it a substantial meal, so the budget in the table is for the bowl on its own, not a starter followed by another main.

If you want something alongside it, the menu includes crispy fried pork-and-vegetable rolls. Treat them as an optional extra that increases the food spend, rather than part of the soup order. Start with the bowl if keeping lunch inexpensive is the priority, and add rolls because you want a larger meal, not because a noodle soup automatically needs another dish.

Sources & fact-checking

Checks against the sources below cover: closures and key figures.

• Pho Vietnam Anglická — closures
• Shop – Lidová jídelna Těšnov | e-shop
• Lidová jídelna Těšnov – Budget – Menu
• HAVELSKÁ KORUNA, s.r.o. — closures
• Sisters Bistro — key figures