Esplanade

Esplanade sits inside the historic Spa Resort Sanssouci — a sprawling Bohemian palace-hotel on the western flank of the spa valley — and operates as the resort's flagship grill room. The dining room is large, cleanly modernised within original 19th-century bones, with a long open-grill counter and several proper round tables that comfortably seat eight to twelve.

The kitchen runs a serious Czech aged-beef programme — dry-aged Bohemian Simmental, hand-cut on the order — alongside a strong rotisserie and grill section: spring lamb, suckling pig, whole grilled fish from the Berounka river. The starters lean Bohemian-classical (smoked duck breast, beef tartare prepared tableside, garlic-and-cumin Carlsbad soup) and the dessert trolley is the kind of properly maintained piece of theatre that has almost vanished from the rest of European dining.

The wine list is broad and value-conscious — strong on Moravian and Slovak reserves, with a useful South-American and Spanish section for groups working through bigger reds. The cellar runs deep enough for a serious wine evening if you want one.

Group bookings are the room's particular speciality: Esplanade routinely runs corporate dinners, family celebrations and festival-week production teams of 10 to 30 covers without losing service quality. A three-course dinner with wine lands around 1,600 CZK per guest, with a flat group menu starting at 1,200.

If you are bringing a team of eight, twelve, or twenty to Karlovy Vary, Esplanade is the room that handles the booking without flinching. The round tables actually allow conversation across the group, the grill and rotisserie format makes ordering for everyone painless, and the wine list is broad enough that the wine-curious in the team have something to argue over without spending the company budget.