Drink the Music: Prague's Cocktail Menu Built Like a Playlist

At The Piano Bar Prague on Na Příkopě, the cocktail list reads like a record collection — and every drink comes with a backstory.

Most cocktail bars in Prague organize their menus the usual way: classics, signatures, non-alcoholic. The Piano Bar Prague, hidden inside the baroque Savarin Palace just off Wenceslas Square, did something stranger. Its bar team built the entire menu as a playlist. The sections aren't "sours" and "spritzes" — they're Blues, Latin, Hip-Hop, Rock & Roll. Every cocktail is named after a song, built to taste the way that song sounds, and served a few meters from a stage where a live band plays most nights of the week.

It might be the most Prague thing imaginable: a city obsessed with music finally getting a cocktail menu that's obsessed right back.

The blues, in a glass

The list opens where all good music does — with the blues. B.B. King, the house signature, is an Old Fashioned rebuilt around Gentleman Jack, port wine, chocolate and fig. It's named for the man who once ran back into a burning Arkansas dance hall to rescue his guitar. The fire had started when two men fighting over a woman knocked over a heater; her name was Lucille, and B.B. named that guitar — and every guitar after it — in her honor, as a reminder never to do anything that foolish again. The drink is what you'd expect from a story like that: dark, rich, and worth the risk.

Nearby sits Golden, a champagne cocktail with peach, saffron and honey, inspired by Jill Scott's neo-soul anthem about living life on your own terms. It's the drink to order when the evening is going exactly the way you planned.

Rock legends and the riff that almost got slept through

The rock section carries the menu's best origin story. Satisfaction, a gin cocktail softened with chamomile tea and sparkling wine, honors the Rolling Stones track whose riff came to Keith Richards in his sleep. He woke just long enough to hum it into a bedside tape recorder and passed out again — the tape held one immortal guitar line followed by forty minutes of snoring. The cocktail is considerably more refined than its origins.

Bohemian Rhapsody is the menu's love letter to both Queen and the Czech Republic — a Negroni rebuilt with Becherovka and a pilsner essence. Like the six-minute song the record label insisted was too strange to ever work on radio, it shouldn't make sense. It does.

And Stayin' Alive, an absinthe-based Collins, is engineered for the dance floor — fitting for a Bee Gees track so relentlessly rhythmic that medics still use its tempo to time chest compressions. At the Piano Bar, it serves a gentler purpose: keeping you upright through one more set.

From Havana to Hawaii — and a nightcap in Paris

The Latin section leans on real bottles and real history. Buena Vista — Havana rum, raspberry, passion fruit, lemongrass — toasts the Havana recording sessions that brought a group of retired Cuban musicians, some in their nineties, out of obscurity and onto the world's biggest stages. Maria Maria is an avant-garde Margarita with mezcal, tomato and mango, named for the Santana hit that itself tips its hat to West Side Story.

Then the menu takes a detour to Hawaii. Over the Rainbow blends rum, cachaça, guava and almond in tribute to Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, who recorded his ukulele version of the 1939 classic in a single spontaneous late-night studio take — a recording so tender it turned a Hollywood show tune into the unofficial anthem of the islands. The cocktail, like the song, is designed to make you exhale.

The journey ends in Paris. La Vie En Rose — tequila with apricot, palo santo, vetiver and a whisper of olive — is built to smell the way a French café sounds. Édith Piaf wrote the song in 1945 and her own entourage told her it was too weak to perform. She sang it anyway, and it became her signature — the melody the whole world hears whenever anyone says "Paris" out loud. Half-dry, woody and quietly romantic, the cocktail earns the name.

Pop, hip-hop, and a peanut butter whiskey sour

The pop chapter has range. Kiss — tequila, rosé vermouth, rhubarb, Dalmatian cherry — channels Prince's minimalist funk classic, a track so stripped-down his label initially thought it was an unfinished demo. Kiss from a Rose honors Seal's ballad, which he was reportedly so embarrassed by that he threw the demo tape into a corner, where it stayed for years before becoming a Grammy-winning worldwide hit via the Batman Forever soundtrack. The drink — lychee, rose, grapefruit — is as delicate as the song's second life was improbable.

Come My Lady takes its name from Crazy Town's "Butterfly," the unlikeliest hit of 2001 — a love song by a heavily tattooed rap-rock crew, built over a gentle Red Hot Chili Peppers instrumental, that flew to number one around the world and never let the band escape its shadow. The cocktail resembles the song's dreamy video more than the band itself: gin, blueberry, lavender and violet shaken with egg white into what the bar calls a bath in fruit and flowers.

The boldest pour on the list might be In Da Club: a whiskey sour with Chivas Regal, peanut butter, cherry and vanilla that tastes, deliberately, like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a Grammy. Order it on your birthday. You know why.

No alcohol, same soundtrack

The non-alcoholic line isn't an afterthought — Buena Vista 0%, Kiss from a Rose 0% and a Negroni 0% are built with the same fruit, florals and structure as their originals, so nobody at the table is drinking a consolation prize.

Where to hear the menu

The cocktails run roughly 250–355 CZK, and the setting matters: The Piano Bar Prague spreads across five rooms in Savarin Palace on Na Příkopě — a live-music Piano Room with a dance floor, a burgundy-walled Lounge, a walk-in cocktail bar, a fine-dining room, and a seasonal terrace. The band plays the songs; the bar serves them. Ordering a B.B. King while a live pianist works through the blues is the kind of small, perfectly tuned Prague moment this city does best.

The Piano Bar Prague Savarin Palace, Na Příkopě 10, Prague 1
Reservations: thepianobarprague.com
Instagram: @thepianobar_prague

FAQ

Where can I try music-themed cocktails in Prague? The Piano Bar Prague in Savarin Palace on Na Příkopě serves a full cocktail menu inspired by songs, from B.B. King to Bohemian Rhapsody, alongside live music most nights.

Does The Piano Bar Prague have non-alcoholic cocktails? Yes — the menu includes 0% versions of several signatures, including a non-alcoholic Negroni and Kiss from a Rose 0%.

Do I need a reservation at The Piano Bar Prague? The cocktail bar welcomes walk-ins; reservations are recommended for the Dining Room, Piano Room and for larger groups, especially on weekends.