Next Door by Imperial

A Room That Does the Work Before the Menu Arrives

On Zlatnická, a street that runs through the commercial edge of Nové Město, two dining rooms face each other across the pavement. One is Café Imperial, whose floor-to-ceiling ceramic tilework is among the most photographed interiors in Prague. The other is Next Door by Imperial, which takes a different architectural position: modern lines inside a classical frame, the open kitchen visible from the rear of the dining room, the brigade in plain view as they plate. The relationship between the two addresses is immediately legible from the street, and it shapes how you read the space before you sit down.

Prague's mid-tier restaurant design has, over the past decade, split broadly into two directions. One school mirrors the dark-panelled, candlelit aesthetic that travelled across Central Europe from Vienna and Budapest. The other pushes toward transparency: lighter materials, kitchens in sight, a deliberate refusal of the hushed formality that defined Czech fine dining through much of the 1990s and 2000s. Next Door by Imperial sits in the second camp. The open kitchen at the rear is not merely decorative; it functions as an organisational signal, telling the room that the cooking process is considered part of the experience rather than something to be concealed. For a city where La Degustation Bohême Bourgeoise represents the formal, sequenced end of Czech restaurant ambition, and where addresses like 420 Restaurant occupy a more casual register, this positioning occupies a productive middle ground.

Classical Dishes in a Contemporary Container

The menu at Next Door by Imperial reads as a document of Czech culinary continuity rather than reinvention. Braised beef with creamy sauce and bread dumplings is the kind of dish that appears on menus from Brno to Bohemia, its variations regional and its technique generational. Sautéed rabbit kidneys with mustard sauce belong to the same tradition: offal preparations that Central European kitchens never abandoned the way French or British ones largely did, and which have found renewed interest among a younger generation of Prague diners who grew up eating them at family tables.

This is worth noting in the context of what Prague's restaurant scene has been doing with its own culinary heritage. Across the city, a range of approaches has emerged. Some kitchens reframe Czech classics through French technique, as at Alcron, where Modern European cooking sits over a base of classical European training. Others, like Alma, work with a more contemporary idiom. Next Door by Imperial makes a quieter claim: that well-executed classical Czech cooking, served in a room with some design investment and a competent front-of-house, represents a coherent and durable offer rather than a nostalgic compromise. The extensive menu structure, which runs from breakfast through continuous all-day service, reinforces this positioning. This is not a tasting-menu destination anchored to a single evening format; it is a room designed to absorb multiple uses across the day.

All-Day Service as Architecture

All-day dining is a format that carries different meanings depending on the city. In London or Paris, it often signals a brasserie model with genuine culinary investment. In Prague, where the rhythm of hospitality still leans toward distinct meal services, a restaurant that opens at breakfast and runs continuously through the day without a kitchen break occupies a specific and useful niche. For visitors staying near Nové Město, this means the address can function as a breakfast room, a working lunch space, and a dinner venue without any of those uses feeling like an afterthought.

The team's organisation, described as well-coordinated and attentive, matters more in this format than in a short, focused dinner service. Managing a room across twelve or more hours requires a different kind of floor discipline than executing forty covers over two sittings. The evidence from the dining room suggests that discipline is present. For comparison, the Zlatnická corridor sits close enough to Prague's tourist centre that operational slippage would be immediately apparent; the volume of passing trade in this part of Nové Město does not forgive a disorganised room.

Visitors looking for further reference points in the region might consider ARRIGŌ in Děčín, ATELIER bar and bistro in Brno, or the more pastoral setting of Babiččina zahrada in Průhonice for a sense of how Czech hospitality operates outside Prague. Further afield, Bohém in Litomyšl, Cattaleya in Čeladná, and Chapelle in Písek represent the range of serious cooking now happening beyond the capital.

Where It Fits in Nové Město

Zlatnická sits at the edge of Nové Město's commercial zone, a few minutes' walk from Náměstí Republiky and the Palladium shopping centre. The street has a transactional character during working hours and a quieter register in the evenings, which suits a room that serves both business lunches and dinner. The address at number 3, Zlatnická 1126, places it in direct visual relationship with Café Imperial, and the parent establishment's reputation provides a degree of ambient credibility: diners who know the ceramic-tiled room across the street arrive with an existing frame of reference.

For those building a broader itinerary around Prague's food and drink scene, EP Club's full Prague restaurants guide maps the city's options across price tiers and styles. The Prague bars guide covers the cocktail and wine bar layer that has expanded considerably since 2018, and the Prague hotels guide addresses the accommodation question for those arriving from outside the city. EP Club also maintains guides to Prague wineries and Prague experiences for a fuller picture of what the city offers. Internationally, those interested in how open-kitchen formats operate at the far end of the ambition spectrum might look at Le Bernardin in New York City or the structured precision of Atomix as reference points for what kitchen transparency can mean in a different context. Closer to the register of casual neighbourhood discovery, Amano offers another Prague option worth comparing.

Planning Your Visit

Next Door by Imperial operates at 3, Zlatnická 1126 in Nové Město, Praha 1, directly opposite Café Imperial. The restaurant is open continuously throughout the day, beginning with breakfast, which makes it one of the few addresses in this part of the city with genuine flexibility across meal occasions. The all-day format means walk-in availability is generally more accessible than at timed-service restaurants, though evenings in this part of Nové Město can fill quickly, particularly on weekdays when the business lunch crowd gives way to dinner. No booking phone or website data is currently held in our records; checking directly through the parent Café Imperial channels is the most reliable approach for reservation queries.