At the beginning of summer, Alois Krcha finally returned to his native Prague. Naturally, he went back to see the places of his childhood. He found Old Town Square scarred by war, and just a few steps from the House at the Black Angel, a massive hole gaped where a wing of the Old Town Hall had been destroyed. “The House at the Black Angel itself remained, by some miracle, untouched. I managed to get back into its cellars, where as a boy I had longed to explore the world. That wish came true, yet I never realized how much I missed home until I smelled the delicious aroma of freshly baked bread drifting from the bakery,” he wrote in one of his final diary entries.
His writing ends here. We'll never know whether Alois stayed in Prague or was once again swept up by his wanderlust. All that remains is a chest full of sketches and recipes, discovered many years later by workers during a renovation of the building. From these notes, the Black Angel’s bar was born — a faithful realization of Alois’s dream. The story of the man who crafted cocktails across the world comes full circle here, in the very bar he never lived to open, yet where you are seated today.
