On February 18, the Restaurant Day festival was held in Prague.
This tradition was celebrated for the first time in Finland in May 2011. The history of this movement started with failure. A group of Finnish businessmen decided to open a restaurant, but lost in an unequal battle with the Finnish bureaucracy. Not being able to complete the registration due to the sheer amount of forms, they decided to open the restaurant for only one day and see how this would work in practice. Since then it is the world’s largest food festival celebrated in hundreds of cities.
Today, any person who wants to try to run a restaurant business and demonstrate his/her culinary skills can register at Restaurant Day where he/she states the hours of work and the approximate number of visitors he/she plans to serve. People who want to do so have to create their own concepts of their one-day establishment. For example, they can book a café or a restaurant and provide their food with drinks there, invite people to their homes (you have to write the owners in advance to make a reservation), or just make a stall with food and serve visitors in parks or garages. Those who enjoy food offered by housewives, culinary lovers, professionals or those who plan to open a real restaurant in the future, can look at the website here ). At this site you can register your own restaurant, and also find the declared one-day restaurants of all European countries, including the Czech Republic, indicating the general direction of the menu; some restaurants offer only sweets, others traditional Czech sausages, Asian food, and so on.
Restaurant Day is celebrated four times a year, in February, May, August and November. If you are in Prague in May, definitely visit this food carnival!
Photo courtesy of Anel Makhanbetova