At home.

There’s a vibrant cafe and patisserie life.  People have coffee out, sit and chat, have a chestnut puree or a Dobos Torta or an Esterhazy Torta; share a beer, linger over a glass of wine.  They grab a quick lunch or have it delivered to work.  But most people don’t understand the reason to eat less well for more money at a time one should be spending with family.  So most restaurants most of the time will be filled with tourists or expats or businesspeople entertaining or doing business.

The things that draw people to restaurants are: huge portions, exotic cuisines, bargains.  Not traditional Hungarian dishes.

Breakfast

Breakfast is just emerging as a meal that anyone eats out.  For croissants and viennoiserie, I favor the Gerloczy Cafe, Cafe Vian, Ket Szerecsen.  There’s a great new breakfast-only restaurant on a tiny side street: Zoska.  Most cafes that are open in the morning will have something you can eat — a croissant or a pastry — Jeg Bufe is high on my list, August Cukraszda is a more pleasant sit and higher end pastries.

Lunch

Etkezdek

Lunch-only for the most part, these places are like American diners, or like UK pubs (without the alcohol), but ultimately all their own thing.  A few tables, some high counters to stand and eat at, or some stools as perches, a counter to order at most of the time, or occasionally waitstaff will take your order and then you pay on the way out (Kadar Etkezde is the notable example of this.  Generally not open until late afternoon.  A menu of options available every day, but most of what’s being cooked varies from day to day — these are places that people go to every day from their workplace or their home, they don’t want the same menu all the time, though they surely have favorites in the repertoire.

When these are great — which is exceedingly rarely — they’re a dream: someone with talent in the kitchen, large portions (almost always available as half orders as well), good basic, traditional dishes.  There’s always fried stuff: chicken or fish, mushrooms, cauliflower..breaded and deep fried.  Hot table stuff, some roasts of indeterminate meat, some stuff made to order, one or more hot soups, in summers a cold soup, a fozelek or two (fozelek is Hungarian comfort food, vegetables overcooked until almost falling into puree, in a flour thickened cream sauce/almost soup.  Heavy, dense, usually a bit sweet.  Peas or green beans or zucchini or squash.  This is what passed for lunch or dinner most days when food was scarce during and after WW II.  The governing metric is not taste but fulfillingness.  Did you stand up still wanting to eat?  A failure.  Do you have trouble standing up, an inability to move your limbs, the feeling that you’ll never eat again?  That’s a great fozelek!

Among the Etkezdek/Etelbarok (essentially similar to etkezdek, perhaps open for dinner as well and with more seating on average) worth a modest detour:

Norbi.

Kadar.

Tepertu

Kamra Bisztro

Főzelékfaló

Kicsi Mama

Heti (weekly) or Napi (daily) or Mai (also daily) Menus

Most places will have an ala carte lunch menu and also offer a daily special 2- or 3-course meal.  These are virtually breakeven menus for very little money.  Perhaps as low as 890 Forints (less than 3 Euros) for three courses.  Up to about 1490 Forints.

They have to stretch the concept a bit to make it all work financially, so an apple could be a course, but these are often great deals if the options suit your taste at the time.  They run out, when good that can happen fast, so don’t expect to wander in at 1:30 and have them still available.  Sometimes they’ll make a substituted menu, mostly not.

They’re not crazy about sharing these with tourists, the cash cows of the lunch meal.  So you may not be offered the menu when you sit down (usually there will be a sign in the window or on the street that says Heti Menu or Napi Menu or Mai Menu or Just Menu.  If you see it outside but they don’t give you a copy of the menu, ask about it.

Businessman’s Lunch

When the daily menu starts to creep up above 1500 Forints, it tends to be put out as a Businessman’s Lunch: again 2-3 courses, often in a very fancy restaurant at prices that make it much more approachable than at dinner time or ala carte, though again it’s a fixed menu with no, or very few, choices.  They can go as high as 4000-5000 Forints.  Macesz has a very good version, as does the Gerloczy, and if I’m not mistaken, Csalogany 26.

Hus Hentesaru

Traditionally, many butcher shops would sell a small range of prepared foods for take away, which then expanded bit into stand-up tables where you can eat what you buy at the counter.  Heavy on wursts, roasts, and fried meats and vegetable, some also have steam tables.

Brumi (large steam table stand up rest, and the best of the lot, on the mezzanine of the Central Market)

Balla-Hus Hentesbolt (Hentesbolt = Butcher)

Belvarosi Disznotoros (City Center Pork)

Kotkoda Baromfibolt (a chicken butcher that sells great fried chicken at lunch time)

Dinner

Classic Hungarian Meals

Nothing fancy, just the traditional dishes made, perhaps a little bit better than at most of the tourist places.  You’ll find a decent number of Hungarians among the guests, often in parties or celebrations:

Rakoczi Etterem

Pozsonyi Kisvendeglo

Epitesz Pince

Pater Bonifac

To See and Be Seen

Biginning

Evidens

Cafe Kor

Comme Chez Soi

St Andrea

Fire

Mensa

Zsidai restos

• Strictly from Hungary by Ladislas Farago
• Budapest: A Critical Guide by András Török
• Only in Budapest by Duncan J.D. Smith
• Budapest, A Cultural History by Bob Dent
• Granta City Guides: Budapest by Michael Jacobs
• One Day in Szentendreby by Eva Gajan (Author), Lajos Rethey Prikkel (Author)
• The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
• Zoli by Colum McCann
• Great Escape by Kati Marton
• TimeOut Budapest
• Food • Wine • Budapest by Carolyn Banfalvi
• Under the Frog by Tibor Fischer
• Nobody Knows the Truffles I’ve Seen by George Lang
• The Cuisine of Hungary by George Lang
•  Transylvanian Cuisine by Paul Kovi
• The Siege of Budapest by Krisztian Ungvary
• Budapest Lightscapes by Bruno Bourel

All trips are filled with the things you didn’t plan for…the surprises as well as the small details that were taken for granted and ignored.

Last summer we spent a full week scouring the city for curtain rings.  It was astonishing.  We went into hardware stores, fabric shops, housewares shops, curtain stores.  No one had them.  Finally we found a wide selection at Obi, a logical place to look but out of the way.  Not a very common tourist need, admittedly, but the next day we met some friends of a friend, visiting from Australia, and they happened to mention that they were looking for curtain rings … go figure.

So this part of the website tries to close that circle, in the hope that it will make at least some of yours less annoying.

• On Not Speaking Hungarian
• Getting Around
• Money, ATMs, Currency Exchange
• Sundays
• Post Offices
• Medical Care
• Photocopying & Photography
• Electricity
• Smoking
• Concierges
• Public Loos