Best Market on Budějovická: how a slice of Ukraine opened in Prague 4, between the fish counter and a barrel of sauerkraut

In the Michle district, near the Budějovická metro station, a place opened this summer that drew a queue longer than the one outside many a trendy restaurant in the city centre — right from its very first weekend. It's not a boutique or a designer showroom, but a grocery store: Best Market, the first Czech branch of a Polish chain that grew out of the Ukrainian diaspora's hunger for the taste of home. That's exactly why it deserves a spot among genuinely new openings worth knowing about: the store at Budějovická 1495/11A in Prague 4 held its grand opening on Saturday, 6 June, at 10:00 — meaning that at the time of writing, it's been open for only about a month and a half.

The chain's story didn't begin in Prague, or even recently. Ukrainian brothers Serhiy and Roman Kolesnikov, who had moved to Poland for work, opened the first Best Market in Kraków back in 2020 and gradually built it into a network of about thirty stores across most of Poland's major cities with sizeable Ukrainian communities. The war became the real catalyst for growth: what started as a small shop for emigrants took off once hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians arrived in Poland and demand surged. By the time of its Czech expansion, the chain had grown to around thirty-three stores, according to the Polish trade portal Wiadomości Handlowe as of April 2026. Prague marked the chain's first move beyond Poland, and the choice of district was no accident either: Prague is home to more than 102,000 Ukrainians, with over ten thousand of them living in Prague 4 alone, while Budějovická is a busy transport hub — big enough to draw in fellow Ukrainians from across the city, yet with enough passing foot traffic to catch the eye of a curious Praguer.

Walking in, the first thing you notice is just how densely packed the shelves are — a modest floor space somehow fits in everything that once required a trip across town or an online order. Across roughly 140 square metres, shoppers can choose from a wide range of delicacies, fish, seafood, cheeses, olives and caviar. The freezer section and the staffed counter deserve special mention: a significant part of the store is taken up by a counter with a dedicated attendant specialising in fish, seafood, squid, olives, cheeses and caviar, while the freezer chest is devoted to pelmeni, varenyky and other frozen Ukrainian specialities. On the shelves you'll find salo (Ukrainian cured pork fat), several types of sausage, smoked and dried fish delicacies, pickled greens in a few variations, plus baked goods, dairy products, Ukrainian sweets and kvass. For those who know Ukrainian cuisine as more than just borsch, there are ingredients here for stuffed cabbage rolls and proper homemade varenyky.

The atmosphere of the store's first days deserves a story of its own — this was no quiet local debut, but a genuine frenzy. Over the weekend, the queue at Budějovická stretched all the way to the sidewalk outside the entrance — the Ukrainian chain Best Market opened its first Czech branch here on Saturday, 6 June, and there was no shortage of interest. The numbers back up the scale of it: more than 300 customers came through the doors in the first three hours alone, with Saturday and Sunday together drawing over a thousand people; according to another source, more than 4,000 people visited in the opening days, and demand was so high that large portions of the assortment sold out almost completely. Staff openly admitted they hadn't been prepared for such a rush: due to the sheer number of visitors, not everyone could be served — management apologised for the inconvenience, acknowledging just how frustrating standing in long queues can be.

An insider tip for anyone planning a visit: go on a weekday, later in the afternoon, to avoid a repeat of those postcard-worthy queues — and don't expect everything here to be noticeably cheaper than at a regular supermarket, since it really depends on the category of product. A price comparison showed that for "shelf staples" like pickled cucumbers, the price level is comparable to the better Czech equivalents, and overall Best Market isn't uniformly cheaper or premium-priced — it all comes down to the category. What you will find here, though, are things simply absent from Czech hypermarkets: a large share of Best Market's goods are shipped directly from Ukraine, whereas Czech hypermarkets tend to carry only a narrow selection of such products, if any at all.

Address: Budějovická 1495/11a, Prague 4 (Michle, next to Budějovická metro station)
Opened: 6 June 2026
Floor area: approximately 140 m²

This place isn't for tourists chasing a postcard version of Prague, but for anyone missing the taste of real Ukrainian salo, sauerkraut and homemade varenyky — as well as curious Praguers and expats willing to explore the city's culinary map beyond the usual Billa and Lidl. Given the chain's ambitions, Budějovická is unlikely to remain its only address in Czechia for long.

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