An absolute gem of a café offering a unique set up: come in, unleash your creativity and paint a mug/plate/whichever piece of ceramics from the wide selection on offer over a nice tea or coffee and cake. Of course, you don’t have to paint anything while you’re there. The café has a nice offer of fair trade coffees, good teas and delicious cakes for decent prices. This is while I prefer this place over the second spot in Prague which offers ceramics painting — kavarna Maluj. While Maluj seems much more purely ceramics oriented and has a rather studio-like feel, Vypalene Kotatko is a chill place where one genuinely likes to return back to even without having an art project on mind. If you do want to paint some ceramics, this is how it works: you pay a small fee(100 crowns if you’re alone, or progressively less down to 50kc/person if you’re a group), and choose one of the bisques(the prices range from 130 for small figures or small mugs to around 250 for big mugs, or around 300 – 500 kc for large pieces like teapots, etc). There is no time limit and you are free to paint away all day — the café usually closes at 10pm. The assistants there are very attentive and helpful especially if it’s your first time — they will explain what types of paints are good for what purpose, the different methods that you can experiment with, etc. Once you’re finished, your piece will be glazed and ready from the kiln in a week max. Couple of personal tips if you aren’t doing this just for the novelty, but want a nice result: — If you want nice rich colors, really take the time and give all you paint at least two coats. It will be worth it. — Trust me, you will need more time than you thought. So come in early and give yourself time to relax(in exceptional cases you can come back and finish your piece if you couldn’t do it in one sitting, but it’s not the norm). I painted my first mug as a gift at Kotatko three years ago and it came out great. It has been used and washed heavily and it still looks as good as new, so the quality of paints and finish must be good.
Jen S.
Rating des Ortes: 4 Las Vegas, NV
If you are in the hradcanska area and want a place to relax with a coffee or tea this place is doable. They have a couple different rooms to sit in, with these random chairs and couches, all very artistic the way they are set up. This café doubles as a ceramic painting studio as well which I thought was quite cool. Service was very friendly, bilingual, and prompt. We had homemade ginger teas for about 35 crowns each and a chips and dip platter which was huge, easily enough to feed 4 people for only 85 crowns. Good deal even though everything came out of a bag or jar from tesco. The atmosphere here was very relaxed and easygoing, never really felt forced to hurry up and get out here which was nice. If you are hanging out here check out the bookcases, the ceramics on display and the frisbees they have for sale!