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Olmarova Upper square · Olomouc
Four rooms, one kitchen

Eating and drinking

Everything is cooked in the one kitchen behind the cellar and carried up or out, so the cafe soup and the dinner soup are the same soup, and nobody apologises for it.

A drawing of the cellar: two brick barrel vaults springing from a central pier, with a long table and benches beneath them.
Two barrel vaults on the rock, with the pier that divides them.

Getting down there

The cellar stair leaves the hall beside the desk: twenty-two steps with a rope handrail on the right. The lift does not go down to the cellar, so if stairs are difficult, tell us when you book and the same card will be served in the passage or upstairs in the salon.

The Rock Cellar

The cellar was cut into the rock the square sits on, probably in the fourteenth century, and it has stayed dry ever since. It has two barrel vaults, forty covers and brick laid on edge underfoot. The kitchen writes a new card every Tuesday and keeps it short: six main dishes, three of them without meat, plus whatever the Hana plain has sent that week.

The cooking is Moravian and doesn't dress up: sour soups, slow beef, carp in season, bread baked in the house, and the pungent local cheese for anyone brave enough. Wine comes from four growers in south Moravia and is poured by the deciliter.

Dinner
Tuesday to Saturday, 18:00 to 22:30
Breakfast
Daily, 07:00 to 10:30
Closed
Sunday and Monday evenings
Booking
By telephone or at the desk; the room is small
A drawing looking along the vaulted passage from the square towards the courtyard, with the groin ribs overhead, an iron gate and a cafe table against the wall.
Looking through the passage to the courtyard; the gate shuts at one.

Under the vault

A groin vault covers the passage, which runs from the square to the courtyard, and an iron gate at the street end is shut at one in the morning. Six tables stand along the north wall, out of the draught. January is cold out there, and staff will tell you so.

Passage Café

Coffee roasted in Olomouc, tea by the pot, and a glass case with whatever the baker on Riegrova sent over at six. At noon there is one soup and one open sandwich, and the cakes come out at four. Anybody off the square is welcome, guests or not, as befits a passage.

Open
Daily, 08:00 to 19:00
Lunch
12:00 to 14:00, one soup and one plate
Seats
Six tables, twenty-two chairs, no reservations
A drawing of the first-floor bar: a round counter with a brass rail, nine stools set around it and three pendant lamps hung low above.
The counter in plan: nine stools, a brass rail, three lamps over it.

The counter

Turned from four pieces of walnut in a workshop in Prostejov in 1994, on a frame that came out of the old reception desk. The brass rail is there for resting a foot; the house has never put a till on top of it.

Lamplight Bar

First floor, at the head of the stone stair, in what the 1894 survey called the small saloon. The counter is round, in walnut with a brass rail, and the lamps hang low enough that the room reads as four or five pools of light instead of one. There has never been music in here, and there won't be.

Moravian wine by the glass from the same four growers, a short list of spirits, beer from a Haná brewery, and a jug of water that arrives without being asked for. The bar also serves the salon and the floor beyond it, so it keeps later hours than the rest of the house.

Open
Daily, 17:00 to 01:00
Last orders
00:30
Seats
Nine stools and four tables in the window
Reaching it
Stone stair from the passage, or the lift to the first floor
A drawing of the courtyard terrace seen from above: the linden tree at the centre, round tables with chairs on gravel, and the arcade along one side.
The courtyard laid out: one tree, twelve tables, the arcade along the north side.

Weather rules

The terrace is laid when the forecast is dry and taken in when it isn't, and in Moravia that decision is made at about half past six each morning. If the forecast turns, breakfast moves back down to the cellar and the day carries on as planned.

Courtyard Terrace

Twelve tables on the gravel under the linden, between the 1748 wing and the back of the house. Breakfast is served out here from May, and on warm evenings the cellar card is carried up as far as the courtyard. The gate is closed to the street, so the only sound is from the kitchen window.

Season
May to September, weather permitting
Breakfast
07:30 to 10:30
Evening
18:00 to 22:00, cellar card
Seats
Twelve tables, no reservations
Practical

Worth knowing before you come down

  • Tell the desk about allergies when you book; the kitchen is small enough to cook around them
  • Children are welcome everywhere except the bar after 21:00
  • Dogs are welcome in the passage and the courtyard, but not in the cellar
  • Breakfast is included for guests and can be bought by anyone else
  • Nothing is sold through this website; reserve by telephone or at the desk
Telephone and address