recently-opened
Mar 10 '10
How About Some Czech, Mate?
Among the many reasons why I am a Very Special Person is that (drumroll) I actually like Czech food. No, I'm not making a joke at the expense of Central Europe's most scoffed-at cuisine. Maybe it's because I lived...
Feb 24 '10
Apropó is... Apropos
As reported on these pages all too often, Budapest is awash with high-priced, high-concept restaurants that fail to live up to their own hype once the oversized plate of undersized food lands on the pristine white tablecloth. And while...
Feb 09 '10
Why Are Budapest's Best Chinese Restaurants Always Halfway to Hunan?
We've got a lot of tasty stuff coming up over the next few days, but before we get to that let me quickly follow up on my recent post bemoaning the distance you have to travel from central Budapest...
Feb 03 '10
Why Are Budapest's Only Vietnamese Restaurants Halfway to Hoi An?
While I've never met an Asian cuisine I didn't like, I've long had an extremely soft spot for Vietnamese. Indeed, just the other night I cooked up a big pot of cà ri gà, or chicken curry with sweet...
Jan 13 '10
Everyone's a Kid in a Candy Store at the New Downtown Sugar!
How's this for half-baked PR: When we last checked in with Sugar! in October, the super-fashionable, Újpest-based cukrászda was in the midst of a media blitz over its creation of a collection of super-cute customized cakes in honor of...
Dec 23 '09
Finally, a Budapest Restaurant Concept to Sink Your Teeth Into
It is one of those ideas that seems so obvious, you can’t believe it hasn’t been done before: take a traditional Hungarian butcher shop, add a few up-market flourishes, and emphasize the pre-prepared food rather than the meat counter....
Dec 08 '09
Most! a Most Welcome Addition to the Budapest Restaurant Scene
According to one of my colleagues over at the drink-focused Pestiside.hu, the recently-opened Most! is a most welcome addition to the Budapest bar scene. Good news! And it gets better, because in my view it's an equally welcome addition...
Nov 17 '09
We're Open Again for Business, Unlike Donatella's Kitchen
Holy smokes sorry for leaving you waiting so long for another post, like some sort of Hungarian restaurant where the waiters stand around talking to each other while your overcooked goose sits in the kitchen getting cold. Anyway, the...
Oct 16 '09
Sushi Sei: Say What?
On display at the recently opened Sushi Sei Sushi Bar in District VII are enormous, glistening pieces of yellowtail, being cut and rolled expertly into huge hand-rolls. There are also fat udon noodles in a savory made-to-order soup. In...
Sep 17 '09
Budget Budapest: All Hail the New King of Szerb-Burgers
It is pleasing to write - during this period of culinary constriction - that there are a few recently opened budget establishments worth your attention, especially if you like grilled meats. One of them, the Burekkirály (Burek King), on...
Aug 14 '09
First Look: The Emporio Armani Caffé
It's been so long since I first saw the "coming soon" signs for the long-promised Emporio Armani Caffé (follow link for contact details and user info) that I was slightly startled when a friend told me it had finally...
Aug 04 '09
Closing Time: Sour Ending for Dolce Osteria
Another month, another round of Budapest restaurant closings. Note that the below bits of bad news may not be entirely fresh, 100% true, or even bad! Also note that you can add to this list or leave your consolations...
Jul 30 '09
Today's Exciting Korean Group Food Porn Brought to You by Arirang
I was just sitting down to write a review of District III Korean restaurant Arirang (follow link for contact details and user feedback) when something occurred to me: I don't know anything about Korean food. Okay, sure, I've eaten...
Jun 12 '09
Dolce Osteria is Sweet!
Customary apologies for taking my sweet time between reviews, but I'm currently stuck on the idea that restaurants should be visited more than once before being subjected to a big write-up. So before getting started, I will saw that...
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...
May 15 '09
Fancy Coffee To Go is Officially a Go in Budapest!
Remember this item from late March about two big coffee-to-go joints about to open in central Budapest? Well, they did! Yesterday morning the Andrássy út Costa Coffee opened its doors to customers for the first time, just a week...
May 08 '09
Is There Anything Closer to a New York Pizza Parlor in Budapest Than This? Fuhgeddaboudit!
Even though I grew up going to family events with people who could have walked straight off the set of the Godfather - Grandma D'Amato warming the escarole pie on the radiator while Uncle Rocky teased Cousin Johnny about...
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...
Apr 15 '09
Does a Better Budapest Really Need the Best of Belgium?
One of the most common conversations that seems to take place among Budapesters keen on international cuisine is the seemingly random distribution of different national "kitchens" around the capital. Why are there a half-dozen Indian restaurants in a relatively...
Mar 25 '09
Budapest Coffee Wars Continue as Coffeeheaven, Costa Prep New Prestige Locations
We should probably be focusing on things a little more substantial than the coming and going in the local premium coffee shop biz, but since our related post last week created a nice dollop of comment froth, we'll follow-up...
Mar 05 '09
Budapest Finally Gets an African Oasis
I have to admit that I was so excited to discover Savannah Africa, a cavernous new restaurant-café-nightclub near Teréz körút, that I immediately blew my cover as a food reviewer, and thus can't promise that your experience will be...
Feb 02 '09
Oh, Great - Now I Get to Give Culinaris Even More Money...
While most of the restaurant news in Budapest so far this year has involved places closing down, there has been at least one notable opening: the "luncheonette" attached to the Culinaris gourmet shop which opened late last summer near...
Nov 28 '08
Wine Society Celebrates New Location with New (Lower) Prices
Local winos have three reasons to rejoice today. First, a new Bortársaság shop has just opened up near the Chain bridge in Buda. Second, as the above teaser indicates, the retailer/wholesaler formerly known as the "Budapest Wine Society" is...
Nov 26 '08
Another Villány Winemaker Comes to Budapest
If three makes a trend, then now it is official: Villány has come to Budapest. Joining Bock Bisztró (partially owned by winemaker József Bock) and Andante Borpatika (partially owned by winemaker Zsolt Tiffan), the Polgár Pince also opened its...
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...
Sep 25 '08
Some Blessed Ice Cream at the Basilica
With the sun having just popped its head over the clouds and the long and grim winter already on the horizon, now's a good time to pop out for a nice tasty ice cream. If that logic makes sense...
Jul 18 '08
Budapest Asian Invasion: Master Wang's Big Night
Wang Qiang (left) - the man who first opened Lanzhou in District VIII, and then the more upscale Új Lanzhou in District II - added a third restaurant to his growing empire earlier this year. This time, it's a...
Jul 01 '08
What's Cooking in Donatella's Kitchen?
[Editor's Note: In the spirit of full transparency, I would like to disclose that I have had a long-running "feud" with one of the investors behind this restaurant: Peter Freed, who is also the driving force behind the annual...
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 01 '08
Testing the Ft 389 Mákos Guba at Mákos Guba
After a long period in which everything new in Budapest had to be overstyled and overpriced, or faceless imitations of established overseas hits, a few places have opened recently that seem to buck that trend, by offering something new...
Mar 06 '08
Sins of Gluttonous Thursday (II): Usurious Wine List Makes MO a No-Go
As long as we are on the topic of unhappy experiences during last month's Torkos Csütörtök 50% off restaurant promotion day, we might as well tell our own sad "Gluttonous Thursday" story. Before going any further, let us first...
Mar 04 '08
Mall Pizza Cone Full of Sajt is Just a Little Too Cheesy
Before I ever ate my first pizza in a cone, I was convinced I would enjoy it. I am inevitably amused when I encounter normal foods in weird shapes, sizes or colors. I was one of those people who...
Feb 25 '08
It's "Häagen Daze and Confusion" as Luxury Ice Cream Hits the Hungarian Food Court
The week before last we said we'd be happier going out to the mall than some fancy restaurant for Valentine's Day, especially if the last course was served at Hungary's first-ever dedicated Häagen-Dazs ice cream parlor, over at the...
Feb 21 '08
Déryné Spawns Irresistible Love Child of Tom George and Szimpla Kert
This may look like a gallery of all the hippest and chicest restaurants, bars and cafés in Budapest, but all the above can be found between - and outside - the four walls of Café Déryné, the renovated cukrászda...
Feb 15 '08
Thank God for Tacos, But Thank Mo for Arriba Taqueria
If you're in the restaurant review racket, pretty much the worst 10 words a friend can call up and tell you are "Hey, I've just opened my new place - come on over!" If the place turns out to...
Jan 24 '08
Renewed Ring Café Rings Most of the Right Bells
The Martini and the steak carry an almost mythical history in the popular imagination. Deals have been struck, wars won and lost, kings created over a two Martini steak lunch. Both the ice-cold Martini and the grilled steak are...
Nov 26 '07
Budget Budapest: Be Happy at Fruccola, or Else
My favorite thing about Fruccola, which opened a few months back on Arany János in District V, is the orange juice squeezer. It is worth going just to watch it in action, robotically juicing orange after orange and spitting...
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...
Oct 09 '07
Caffe da Carlo, the Crème de la Crema of Budapest Cafés
There is a scene in David Lynch's Mulhulland Drive where an Italian movie producer asks for a linen napkin with his espresso so he can be prepared to spit out the swill an American mogul had taken great pains...
Oct 08 '07
Organic Options Increase in Budapest
Hungary's largest organic products store opened in Budapest's Mammut I shopping center on October 4, reports Velvet.hu. The 600-square-meter store named Bio Centrum sells the same products normally available in Hungarian grocery stores, from kolbász and yoghurt to cosmetics...
Sep 12 '07
Enjoy Genuine Italian Food, Just Like It's Prepared in Münster and Washington, D.C.
So by this point, almost everyone with an ear to the ground in the Budapest dining scene knows about Vapiano, which recently opened up the first of numerous locations planned for Hungary. The launch of the "fashion street" branch...
Sep 11 '07
Budget Budapest: The Glorious New Age of Old Amsterdam
Don't you love it when things get better? Despite what you may think, this actually happens in the world of Budapest dining. Old Amsterdam was, when I arrived in the city so many years ago, a dingy pub that...
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...
Jul 24 '07
Mezcal's Almost Holy Mole Defiled by Service "Mexican Standoff"
Every other Mexican restaurant in Budapest has let me down in one way or another, so I went to Mezcal, a newish mexikói eatery in the up-and-coming ninth district, determined to hate it. I left determined to hate it...
Jun 08 '07
Ciao Budapest (VI): Novelli, An Italian Grill Without The Smoke
For years, the international community in the leafy ex-pat ghetto of Hüvösvölgy (chilly valley) to the north of Budapest has been dining out at Náncsi Néni. But times are changing and moneyed suburbanites are looking for something new, exciting...
Jun 06 '07
Ciao Budapest (III): We're Not Just Italian, We're Ligurian!
Our first-ever "Italy Week" continues with a trip to Peccati di Gola, which recently opened up on a busy but often overlooked street in inner Pest. Which may be an appropriate location, because it specializes in cuisine from a...
May 22 '07
Tune in To Csalogány 26 Before it Gets Cancelled
One of the great mysteries of the Budapest dining scene is how so many tables in so many "white tablecloth" restaurants can manage to remain empty on any given night. In one sense this glut is a boon to...
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 16 '07
Details Emerge in Mass Food Critic Assault on Fancy French Ferencváros "Fortress"
Our ongoing look at overly-formal Budapest restaurants that don't quite make the cut continues, with what may be the most bizarre "up-market" local eatery we've ever had the non-pleasure to experience. We ended up at Alcasar last Friday afternoon...
Apr 13 '07
Creol: Semi-Excellent Semi-Caribbean Cuisine at Semi-Compelling Prices
For whatever reason, whenever a new high-end restaurant opens in Budapest, its menu is almost guaranteed to offer some sort of attention-grabbing international or "fusion" element. Unfortunately, these experiments often backfire, sometimes spectacularly. And even if the food delivers...
Apr 11 '07
New Downtown Design Showcase Could Be Restaurant Hell - or Bar Heaven
As we said yesterday, genuine luxury is more than just the opposite of poverty. So whenever a super-luxurious new café or restaurant springs up - and almost everything that springs up in Budapest these days is pretty lux -...
Apr 06 '07
Three Out of Three Uzbeks Give Bukhara Bár Big Thumbs Up
While we are perfectly comfortable passing judgment on most things involving food and wine here in Hungary, occasionally we run across certain cuisines and other things that even we recognize are beyond our capabilities. Take, for example, the Bukhara...
Mar 26 '07
Steakhouse Stakeout (II): The Uncertain Benefits of Beef Club Membership
In the first part of today's three-course helping of steak-related stories we told the story of a long wait for a steakhouse that was supposed to open in Budapest, but didn't. Now we move on to a story of...
Mar 22 '07
Concerned Wine Bar Owner Makes Good Wine Bar Owner
Last week we published a slightly harsh review of the The Ultimate WineCafé, taking the recently-opened wine bar to task for making us wait too long for our wine, and for a few other things that made us think we...
Mar 21 '07
Klassz Outclasses Crass Hit-and-Run Critics
This site prides itself on usually being the first to write (at least in English) about recently-opened restaurants in Budapest. But we take even more pride in doing a good, thorough job when passing judgment on notable new establishments....
Mar 13 '07
Slow Wine Bar Makes Not-So-Good Wine Bar
As we reported yesterday, slow sushi can make good sushi. But this does not mean that slow service is a virtue, or a vice that we are normally willing to suffer. And there are certain kinds of hospitality businesses...
Mar 09 '07
Reliable Italian Eatery Make Surprise Station Stop on Andrássy út
For a few short years, a restaurant along Andrássy út called "Millennium" attempted to cash in on Budapest's love affair with its historic "millennium line" metro - the oldest in continental Europe - by offering an interior that consisted...
Mar 08 '07
If You Love Mokka, You'll Love Dió (If You Can Tell Them Apart)
With work being done on several new eateries, the area around Pest's nicely-restored Szent István tér continues to burnish its reputation as one of the city's key dining districts. Already, two new places have opened on the short leg...
Feb 07 '07
We Like the Old/New Fausto's So Much We Keep Forgetting to Try the New/Old Fausto's
Local lovers of Italian food may already know that perennial olasz great Fausto's moved to a new location late last year, and left behind a "second-label" restaurant in its old location on District VII's smoky Dohány utca. We suspect...
Jan 31 '07
A Hungarian Restaurant That Shows The Older Guys How It's Done
Budapesters seem to look for two largely incompatible things in their dining experiences. Value for money and a veneer of exclusivity - which helps explain the ongoing popularity of Remíz. On the other hand, what many of the top...
Dec 21 '06
Desk Test: Same Same Chinese Food, But Different
The Delivery: Pho Bo Vietnamese beef & noodle soup (Ft 840); Phad Thai fried prawn rice noodles (Ft 1,440); Brownie (Ft 380). From: Tuk-Tuk, via Netpincér.hu The Lowdown: While the delivery options available to Budapest couch potatoes and office...
Dec 20 '06
A Speedy (Negative) Review of Budapest's First Fast-Food Mexican Restaurant
A fast food Mexican restaurant in Budapest seems like a no-brainer. Taquerias successfully became a cheap alternative to franchise restaurants in California, and the chain Fresh Tortilla spread across New York with such muscle that with you'd have thought...
Dec 20 '06
A Speedy (Positive) Review of Budapest's First Fast-Food Mexican Restaurant
Never again can anyone say that Budapest isn't a proper city, because, as of last Saturday, not only do we have Mexican food, we have fast-food Mexican food! Woo-hoo!...
Oct 12 '06
Callas Takes Break From Opera, Plays It Cooler Than Tom George
The increasing "tomgeorgification" of the Budapest dining scene continues to cause concern, so it was with some trepidation that we stepped into Callas, the latest trendy café-restaurant-bar to open in Budapest - as of yesterday. The opera themed name...
Oct 11 '06
Articsóka Peels Off New Leaf and Plops Into Top 33
As was reported on our sister site Pestiside.hu last week, what had been known as the "Pestiside Top 33" list of best restaurants in Budapest will from now on be known as the Chew "Top 33". Unfortunately, as the...
Sep 29 '06
Cantina Taverna Now Key Game Player in Budapest
One ongoing riddle for local fans of fine Italian dining is what exactly to make of Cantina Taverna, the small below-ground eatery on District V's Széchenyi utca opened a few months back by the owners of the nearby Trattoria...
Sep 29 '06
It's All Greek to You at the Apollon Görög Csemege
As we said back on Monday, specialty food shops are now so common in Budapest that they are verging on the generic. In fact, just a few hours after we wrote that we were strolling to a dinner and...
Sep 28 '06
Newest Tom-George Clone Retains Original Culinary DNA
You know a trend is serious when people invent a word to talk about it. And in the world of Budapest dining there is no trend more talked about than "tomgeorgification," meaning the opening of a restaurant that aims...
Sep 25 '06
District VII Café Pulls Bohemian Rabbits Out of Hat
Naming your new café after a cult kids TV show is always a good idea, given how much time even non-hipsters spend reminiscing about the idiot boxes of their youth. "Bob and Bobek" (above, with big floppy ears; we're...
Sep 25 '06
Gourmet Food in Budapest Now Officially Generic
It's always hard to pinpoint when a relatively new trend has stopping being new and has instead become just a normal part of life. But a good sign is when people involved in the trend stop acting as if...
Sep 22 '06
Cheap 'n Cheerful Korean-Chinese Returns to Downtown
A few years back there used to be a great little Asian joint down on the little disjointed stretch of Zichy Jenő utca where it terminates at the körút. What made it great was that it served both the...
