cuisines: international
Dec 29 '09
Can Hester from London Beat Baraka's New Year's Offer? Unlikely Indeed!
Among the holiday greetings and other assorted messages dropped in our inbox over the past week were two interesting and related items having to with New Year's Eve dinner specials. Here's the first: Hi, I have been such a fan...
Nov 19 '09
Óóóóóóó No! (I) Adiós for Artesano?
As we said on Tuesday, we're back in business, but some others aren't. Seeming among the restaurants that have recently thrown in the towel are Artisano, the sweet little Spanish joint on District VI's Ó utca we profiled in...
May 29 '09
Is Stand Bistro the Budapest Restaurant We've All Been Sitting Around Waiting For?
As I argued a while back, Hungary's ongoing - or at least looming - "restaurant apocalypse" may not be such a bad thing, as there is plenty of dead wood in the national eatery trade that deserves to be...
Apr 24 '09
Okay, Yes, Costes is Among the Best
With just a few irregular contributors and no real official budget to speak of, this editor is not going to apologize for failing to review every new or notable restaurant in Budapest. But if I was going to act...
Apr 20 '09
Go Ahead and Get "Trapped" at Silenus
It is easy to approach the Silenus Pub (follow link for contact details) with negative preconceptions, given its location on the outskirts of Budapest's top tourist rip-off district. Okay, Petőfi Sándor utca may be the poor tourist hustler's Váci...
Jan 13 '09
A New Golden Age for Aranyszarvas?
Like food itself, restaurant reviews are perishable, meaning that after a certain period of time they always go off. In some cases, though, a review can remain valid for years. Back in the summer of 1998, for example, a...
Dec 22 '08
The Babel About Budapest (II): Blog Blab Mixed on Babel Delikát
Regular readers may have noticed a flurry of recent comments on this site from folks who claim I and my co-authors don't know anything about food, and are thus unqualified to review restaurants. (You can "enjoy" some of the...
Dec 09 '08
Mmmmm. M. is Back
The restaurant known only as M. (follow link for contact details and user feedback) and its tiny District VII storefront made a quiet splash when it opened seven years ago, earning a following with its inventive comfort food, frequently...
Nov 07 '08
I Have a Hunch this is the Best Hotel Brunch in Hungary
It is currently around 3:00 p.m on a Friday, which means that lots of local foodies are right now busy pondering where to go out for dinner over the weekend. But a smaller subset of these avid eaters will...
Nov 05 '08
An Olympic Achievement in Culinary Invention
The two most recent restaurant reviews I've written on this site - of glamorous Japanese dining spot Kyoto and the more humble Chinese eatery Wang Mester Konyhája - were both very positive, but prefaced with lots of grumbling about...
Jun 26 '08
Maligán Borétterem Falls Just Short of Own Hype
After singing the praises of József Szentesi's wines and budget restaurant, a visit to Maligán (follow link for contact details and user feedback), the restaurant he owns and used to run, was long overdue. He no longer runs it...
Jun 13 '08
French-Hungarian Bistro Offers Head-Turning "Down Under" Wine Dinner on Monday
So while I was being wowed at Artisano on Wednesday, who should walk by but Lajos Tisza of the nearby Café Bouchon, carrying a bag of very home-made-looking sausages, for a "trial" of the menu he was putting together for...
Jun 11 '08
Artesano Too Astonishing to Wait for a Proper Review
One of my biggest faults as a restaurant critic is that I always end up waiting forever to publish reviews of places I've been to, in part due to simple laziness and incompetence, but also because I keep thinking...
Apr 25 '08
Prices Not Only Thing High at Budapest's Latest Gimmick Restaurant
Not already burned out on Budapest restaurants where the prices are sky-high and the food plays third fiddle to high design and high concept? Good news, because I've just found a recently-opened eatery that elevates the local form-over-function and...
Apr 09 '08
Budapest's First UK-Style Gastropub, or Just a Smoky Kocsma with Square Plates and High Prices?
I know I sound like a broken record, but it never ceases to amaze me what "trend slaves" Budapest restaurateurs are. Given the choice between simple good eats and some highfalutin' new concept, décor or foreign cuisine, most seem...
Mar 10 '08
International News (III): Chaos as Hungarian-French Bistro Debuts Norwegian-English Fish 'n Chips
While on a routine checkup of current "Top 33" member Gerlóczy Kávéház [details/user feedback] [related Chew items] last Friday we were stunned to see on the list of specials a plate of "salmon fish 'n chips" (Ft 2,630/€10) with...
Feb 27 '08
Sziasztok Szerbek (I): Double-Double Stuffed at Kafana
So as you have no doubt heard, it's been a painful couple of weeks for our friends just over the border in Serbia, as well as lots of szerbek living here in Hungary. Yes, we know, the whole Kosovo/Kosova...
Feb 13 '08
Budget Budapest: Archívum Étterem és Kávézó
Though I must have passed Archívum a thousand times on the way to Kálvin tér, there was never a good enough reason to go in: nearby APA Cuka has a more tempting menu for food, and Prága Café, two...
Oct 17 '07
Pesti Lámpás Needs to Shine Its Light on Dreary Downtown Dinner Scene
Probably our most longstanding complaint about the Budapest dining scene is the appalling lack of high-quality "white-tablecloth" restaurants where one can eat good traditional Hungarian food at night. Because the "business lunch" menus commonly offered by area eateries tend...
Sep 18 '07
Service Blog Snaps at Csalogány 26, Unbeatable Lunch Special Bites Back
The last time we checked in with Csalogány 26 we were worried that the very promising Hungarian/International restaurant would not stay long on the "Top 33" because of a lack of patrons. Now, however, there is a different concern....
Aug 14 '07
Looks Like Time to Open Up a New Tag for "Recently-Closed"
With the summer tourist season in full swing, these should be great days for Budapest's restaurants, especially those catering to tourists and other higher-spending patrons. Alas, this does not seem to be the case for everyone. And if three...
Jun 15 '07
The Decorations are Not the Only Things Through the Roof at the For Sale Pub
This is likely to be one the shortest restaurant review we'll ever publish, as during our visit earlier this week to the For Sale Pub we never actually ate anything. Unlike our aborted trip to the New York Kávéház,...
May 18 '07
Medium-High Budapest Restaurant Quality at Medium-High Boston Prices
As we have noted before, most of the international-style restaurants you see opening up in the higher-rent sections of Budapest these days tend to be what might be called "Tom-George clones," owing to their at least superficial resemblance to...
Apr 24 '07
Mysterious Hungarian "Super-Chef" Doubles as International Crime-Fighter
A year or so back we noticed that a somewhat intriguing entry had been submitted to our sister site Caboodle.hu's list of caterers and party planners. What piqued our interest about Cheflaszlo was that it advertised high-quality catering not only...
Apr 23 '07
Leading Sports Bar Increasingly Competitive in Overlooked Food Category
With the recent start of this year's grand prix auto racing season, we again find ourselves exiled from our own home for several hours most Sundays, thanks to our race-hating better half. But that's just fine, because we're happy...
Apr 20 '07
Time to Go Drop Some Money at Papageno
[Editor's Note: This restaurant has closed for business.] As you may have seen, we've recently spiffed-up our list of Top 33 restaurants in Budapest, giving the T33 its own attractively-designed page, and including links to the "tags" for articles...
Apr 18 '07
Growing Opposition to Hungarian Cookbook by Opposition Leader's Wife
In what must be one of the oddest collisions between politics and food in recent Hungarian history, a new cookbook by the wife of the country's opposition leader is being unfavorably compared to a collection of recipes endorsed by the...
Mar 23 '07
Five Big Reasons Café Kör Will Probably Stay on the Top 33 Forever
We're not going to list all of the restaurants that seem likely to remain on our "Top 33" list of Budapest restaurants forever. But having given five little reasons why the manically inventive Baraka can claim near-permanent T33 status,...
Jan 29 '07
Bourgeois Tram Depot Fails to Dissappoint
Oh, the anger! Is there no justice for miserable restaurant critics with an agenda? Apparently there isn’t. After literally dozens of visits, the last couple of which were truly horrendous, we went to popular Buda eatery Remiz so we...
Nov 21 '06
M. Splashes Cold Water on Bottle-Pushing Competition
We've always adored M., the rough-and-ready bistro on District VII's Kertész utca that has been a member of our elite "Top 33" club for the past year or so. The food is generally very good, the décor is charming...
