foreign
Apr 08 '09
World's Most Exclusive Hungarian Restaurant for Sale
Despite all the misery facing the entire restaurant sector, we haven't gotten wind of many restaurants being put on the block by their owners. But one such prospective sale that we have heard of is worth a mention. According...
Jan 23 '09
I Went on Vacation in America and All I Got Was this Fake Hungarian Salami
Sorry for the lapse in posting, but your dear editor (that would be me) was away for a few weeks visiting the United States. As usual, my visit to America involved numerous trips to local food shops, to partake...
Oct 21 '08
They Really Weren't Joking About Taking Túró Rudi to China
No matter how often the story of the Chinese Túró Rudi rises to the top, it always smells a little bit off. But despite these suspicions, it finally looks like Hungary's number one dairy snack really will be rolling off...
Oct 14 '08
Hungarians Play Culinary Defense for NATO Visit
While Pestiside.hu reported yesterday on the bitter ironies of the recent NATO Partnership Running Festival, the chefs organizing the buffet dinner for the recent invasion of NATO dignitaries at Budapest's Museum of Fine Arts were in equally "defensive" mood, refusing...
Sep 29 '08
And Make Sure to Try Our Boiled Disznósajt and Fried Túró Rudi Bars
This has to be the best sentence I've read today: I could hear Zoltan trying to explain in Spanish that his was the only Hungarian restaurant in Scotland. More follows in this review. What is the world coming to?...
Apr 15 '08
The World Gags on Hungarian Flavors
Over the past couple of weeks, we've received not one but two emails pointing us to spoof advertisements for non-existent products featuring traditional Hungarian flavors. The first (above) features a range of condoms flavored with such typically Magyar ízek...
Mar 14 '08
For Now, Lou-Lou (and Hungary) Will Have to Settle for the Top 33
Because this publication follows the rather quaint (at least in Hungary) policy of not taking free meals from restaurants - or any sort of compensation/bribes - when doing reviews, we try to make sure that whenever we splash out...
Mar 10 '08
International News (I): The Little Lemon that Brings New York to Budapest
We were doing our shopping the other day in the Belvárosi Vásárcsarnok (District VI market hall) when we happened upon something usual: Meyer lemons. If you don't know the Meyer lemon, it's sort of a cross between a lemon...
Feb 19 '08
An Exceptional Offer for the Ex-Fat Expat!
So we were over at the expatriate-heavy FirstMed medical center in Buda a few weeks back (don't ask) when we happened on the above two flyers - one for the clinic's weight-reduction program, and one for a special "two...
Feb 08 '08
Will There be Meter-High American-Style Whipped Hungarian Hog Fat Ice Cream at this Weekend's Budapest Mangalica Festival? Anything's Possible!
Our latest last-minute post about an upcoming food event involves this weekend's first-ever "Budapest Mangalica Festival", a multi-day extravaganza featuring all kinds of activities involving Hungary's most overrated beloved breed of pig. But instead of giving you a longwinded...
Jan 29 '08
Star Serves a Mean Kebab, Despite Reports of Surly Service
Our friends over at Pestiside.hu just posted a lurid account of a "Kebab Shop Bloodbath" involving some foreign tourists and knife-wielding members of the staff of the Star Kebab restaurant near Pest's Nyugati tér. We can't add much to...
Jan 29 '08
Tokaj Almost as Exciting a Tourist Destination as... Detroit
Okay, so we were trying to ignore this, but since several readers have sent it in, here we go: according to a "best of" piece published in the travel section of the New York Times last month, the famed Hungarian...
Jan 17 '08
Doing the Time Warp in Cleveland's Little Budapest
As most of people reading this site are never likely to visit Cleveland, Ohio, and as most of those thousands of Hungarians in what was once Hungary's second city by population have already been to Little Budapest, it is...
Jan 09 '08
The Hungarian Salami King of Illinois
Because of strict controls on the import of foods, Hungarians living in the US and Canada are starved of home-made Hungarian meat products, unless they can ask a friend or relative to play meat mule and smuggle their pungent...
Dec 17 '07
Hungarian Tube Meats Honored by EU, Scorned by Hungry Locals
We've got two pieces of interesting news relating to processed meat from Hungary, one good, and one bad. Since we're traditionalists, we'll start with the bad. According to a report late last week in daily Magyar Hírlap, leading Salami...
Nov 26 '07
Hungary's Unwanted Crab Invasion May Require Extreme Culinary Measures
Over on Caboodle.hu this morning they are reporting that some fishermen down near Mohács recently had an unexpected catch in the form of some Chinese Mitten Crabs. As the name suggests, the crab is very much not native to these...
Nov 16 '07
Deep-Fried Friday (II): Going Mad for Transylvania's "Angry" Donuts
Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár is a city on the move, as only a town with three names can be. Part of a booming portion of formerly Hungarian-ruled Transylvania, it is the seat of a young but burgeoning wine industry, a hot-spot with...
Nov 15 '07
Czech Crocodile Thrashes Slovak Leopard in Foreign Sandwich Face-Off
There was a time in Budapest when sandwich options were easy, and very home-grown: There were the open-faced canopies served at few select büfés, or the meleg szendvics (which appetizingly translates as "warm sandwich"), an increasingly endangered species usually...
Oct 24 '07
A Bittersweet Reminder of Would-Be Hungarian Gourmands' Purchasing Power
While waiting for our morning metro the other day at a station in downtown Budapest we spotted this billboard on the other side of the tracks. If your Hungarian is poor enough that you can't tell what it is,...
Oct 15 '07
Giving Hungarian Food a Good Name in Barberton, Ohio
There are few Hungarian restaurants outside of Hungary and the Hungarian-speaking parts of nearby countries, and when you do hear anything about these restaurants, it's hardly ever good. Instead, they almost always seem to give Hungarian cuisine a bad...
Sep 05 '07
Hungary's Biggest Dessert Treat Heads to World's Biggest Market
The slow but inexorable march of Hungary's favorite sweet snack took a giant leap forward at a Hungarian-Chinese economic forum held in Beijing on Monday, when a recently-formed Hungarian company, EU-Milk Technologies Kft. signed a co-operation contract with a Chinese...
Jul 05 '07
We're Dancing as Fast as We Can
Apologies for the light posting, but we've been light-staffed over the past few weeks, owing to an early-summer break, this time in Sicily, where the above somewhat gruesome (okay, really gruesome) picture from the rabbit section of the Catania...
Jun 14 '07
Tasting Fatigue (I): Sponsor's Mega-Pour Marred by Lack of Lousy Wines
If we can blame our absence yesterday on anyone but ourselves, the blame would fall on one of our esteemed advertisers, leading Hungarian wine producer/wholesaler/retailer Monarchia, which on Tuesday hosted a tasting of 92 wines at the Búsuló Juhász...
Jun 04 '07
Ciao Budapest (I): Welcome to Italy Week at Chew.hu
No, the above pics are not from some just-opened Italian restaurant in Budapest. Instead, they are a few shots we took last week during our whirlwind, eight-day eating tour of north-central Italy. (That's stuffed zucchini flowers from near Venice...
May 15 '07
Legendary Czech-Slovak Ersatz Cola Arrives On Hungarian Market
It is always nice to see another country's national drinks on the supermarket shelves (even if they are non-alcoholic) and any product that can challenge the hegemony of Coca-Cola and Pepsi in any market demands maximum respect. So with all...
Apr 25 '07
Budapest's Long Non-Burek Nightmare Ends on Király Utca
Burek, the greasy, filling Balkan mad scientist's improvement on meat pies, has had a sketchy history in Budapest. In years past it was available at summer bars, particularly those featuring Yugo-refugee chefs fleeing the most recent Balkan war. One...
Apr 24 '07
International Obesity Experts to Pig Out Tonight in Domonyvölgy
If you've noticed a larger than normal volume of stories in the international press about the problem of obesity over the last few days, the reason may be the 15th European Congress on Obesity, which is currently underway in...
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 20 '07
Infamous British Food Exhibitionist Spotted in Budapest's District VI
So we were walking through Pest's District VI the other day, minding our own business, when we happened upon this rather shocking scene. Yes, that's Jamie Oliver - a.k.a. "The Naked Chef" - peering out from the side of...
Apr 04 '07
Romania-Mania (II): Best. Breakfast. Bacon. Ever.
Though Romanians may be streaming across the border to forage for food in Hungary, you shouldn't get the impression that there is no decent grub to be had next door. Exhibit "A" is this gorgeous plate of thickly-sliced and...
Apr 04 '07
Romania-Mania (I): Mămăligă-eaters Cross Border for Food Bargains
From our foreign desk comes an interesting story that you might want to keep in mind for the next time someone in Hungary bitches about high food prices. According to an article in the Romanian daily Romania Libera summarized on...
Mar 30 '07
Hungarian-Italian Wine War to Escalate on Monday
As we reported last September, an EU court gave wine producers within the EU until this April to adhere to a 2004 ruling by the European Commission and stop calling their wines "Tokaji," or any similar name that might make...
Mar 20 '07
Zwack Unicum Launches Moustache Blitz Across America
Unicum, Hungary's bitter-sweet herbal liquor, may not be to everyone's taste (in fact Peter Zwack says the secret is to get people to try it a second time), but it seems to be causing a buzz in the US....
Mar 02 '07
Diaspora Food News (III): Hungarian Restaurant Celebrates Half-Century Killing Canadians
Our final look at the world of Hungarian food beyond our (current) borders involves the story of the 50h anniversary of the Budapest Restaurant, located in London, Canada, and run by the 75-year-old Marika Hayek (above). According to this...
Mar 02 '07
Diaspora Food News (II): Authentic Hungarian Restaurant Experience Now Available in Chicago
In other Hungarian food news from the world outside, we stumbled upon an interesting review in the Chicago Tribune's reader "feedback" area, for an eatery in the Chicago suburb of Hillside known as the Epicurean Hungarian Restaurant. See if...
Mar 02 '07
Diaspora Food News (I): Australians, Americans Shock With "Hungarian" Parmesan Rolls, Olive Oil Gulyás
In addition to keeping an eye on what's cooking here in Hungary, we try to occasionally check in and see what the millions of "hyphenated" Hungarians living abroad are doing to keep the homeland's culinary traditions going. And it's...
Feb 26 '07
And Don't Forget to Try the Hot Road Apple Pie
The above little chestnut just appeared in our in-box. While it's entitled "Romania in the EU" and was no meant to show how poor and primitive our eastern neighbor is, we're posting it anyway, because a) we're not 100%...
Feb 20 '07
The Idiot Foreigners' Guide to the Perfect Bográcsgulyás
Our carnival of beefblogging continues today with a big shout out to renowned Hungarian cyberfoodie Domestic Goddess, who responded to our item gently teasing her for only now learning to cook marhapörkölt with an even more candid follow-up post...
Feb 05 '07
Hungarian, African-Style (II): Mauritanian Camel Beats Magyar Beef in Desert Tarhonya Test
Just because many participants in the 2007 Budapest-Bamako rally chickened out of eating fresh fish, it doesn't mean the event was devoid of culinary adventure. Far from it! In fact, one of the most memorable interludes of the trip...
Feb 02 '07
Hungarian, African-Style (I): Delicious Fresh Fish? No Thanks!
Apologies for the light posting, but we've just gotten back from Africa, and have been slow in getting our appetite for work back. Not that we are sick from anything we ate; like most of the participants in the...
Nov 24 '06
Giving Thanks for America's Embrace of Hungarian Food
So yesterday was Thanksgiving, the day most Americans set aside to give thanks for their good fortune, mostly in the form of giant stuffed turkeys and other traditional fare. But over the past couple of weeks we've happened upon several...
Nov 17 '06
Culinary Traitor Stalks Hungarian Prime Minister's Kitchen
When a dignitary from one country entertains a fellow dignitary from another country at his residence, several age-old customs are usually recognized. First, the mood and conversation is expected to be polite but businesslike. Second, the dress is expected to...
Nov 16 '06
Badacsony Wines Take Russian Gold at Moscow Trade Fair
The Russians may be dubious about Hungarian fruit and vegetables, but they seem to think Hungarian wine is just fine. According to the appropriately named website orientpress.hu, entries from Badacsony's Varga Pincészet won top awards in two of the...
Nov 10 '06
Everyone Head to the Pierogi Party!
Despite the conventional wisdom, if you are from Chicago and no longer live there, it is not pizza that you miss but Polish food. My favorite hometown restaurant, The Busy Bee (now closed), was a family-owned Polish restaurant under the...
Nov 06 '06
Favorite Hungarian Snack Revealed as Potential Terrorist Weapon
So if you're flying out of Budapest's Ferihegy airport be aware that, starting from today, certain new restrictions are being applied to what you can carry on board departing aircraft. Following the lead of other airports, Ferihegy is putting in...
Oct 24 '06
It May Not Be Genuine Philly, But It Will Damn Sure Do
In the world of American cuisine, few things are more beloved, and heatedly fought over, than the Philadelphia cheesesteak, also known as the Philly cheesesteak, or simply the steak and cheese sandwich. While containing only beef, cheese, bread, (usually)...
Oct 18 '06
Rumored New Budapest Restaurants So Hip They Don't Even Exist
We've just received the following note from the editor of a glossy magazine published in a certain well-known glossy European capital looking for some rather intriguing information on the Budapest dining scene. (Address and first and last paragraph omitted.) See...
Oct 16 '06
Taste of Bulgaria Leaves Budapest Culinary Critic Near Tears
Posting was a bit light last week, as your trusty founding editor was taking a little break from Hungarian food and drink in nearby Bulgaria. Because this site is dedicated to Magyar culinary goings-on, I won't go in too...
Oct 05 '06
Italian-Hungarian Shocker (I): We Thought That Ham Tasted Familiar
So last week's mondo-Italiano food and wine night apparently featured more than just some good olasz eats and drinks. According to a follow-up on deluxe.hu, figures announced at the event show a dramatic increase in food and wine trade between...
Oct 03 '06
Political Edibles (II): Minister Wages Inquisition Against Imported Food
While Hungary's allegedly xenophobic nationalist opposition is internationalist enough to serve Mexican jalapeño poppers at their campaign breakfasts, the country's supposedly foreigner-friendly Socialist-Liberal government seems to be waging a war against imported food. The leader of the inquisition is Agriculture...
Sep 26 '06
EU Ruling Leaves Italian "Tocai" Producers Facing Cold Turkey
As we've just proven, it doesn't take much to justify a celebration over wine in Hungary. But this week Hungary's Tokaj region has another reason to celebrate: according to a report in the Austrian press picked up by various media...
Sep 22 '06
Transylvanians Score with Anti-Vampire Meat Pancakes
You'd have to be a fool - or a vegetarian - not to love Hortobágyi Palacsinta, the traditional meat pancake dish originally from the Hungarian great plain, and found wherever Hungarians are served. But it took us a visit...
Sep 20 '06
Will Russians Sour on Hungarian Fruit and Meat?
While the brief summit meeting between Hungarian and Russian political leaders on Monday was overshadowed by the outbreak of violent anti-government protests in Budapest, even more overshadowed were the food-related discussions of the pow-wow. According to various Magyar and Slavic...
Sep 18 '06
Czech "Robo-Sandwich" Wars Spread to Hungary
Around the world, and especially in Hungary, foodies love to make fun of the culinary traditions of the Czechs. But if the Bohemians preside over a kitchen that historically has been one of Europe's most bland and uninspiring (and...
Sep 14 '06
Wine News (II): How About a Nice Ukrainian Tokaji with Your Borsch and Holubtsi?
It's not just the producers of Hungarian banknotes who are worried about counterfeiting in neighboring Ukraine. News portal Index.hu recently got hold of a bottle of "tokaji" muskotály and hárslevelű made in Beregszász, Ukraine. Hungarian experts said the bottles are...
