The ÉS bistro located in the Kempinski is so open I have just received three invitations from them. One is for this Monday to try the food in the restaurant, because this will be the first day when the kitchen is operating and you cannot have more relevant invitation than this. And a bit later I have also received an invitation for last Friday to the same place to a party. So this is how the whole Monday opening thing became frivolous. And exactly when I said yes to the party, I have received another invitation for Friday noon. This was the point when I started to feel dizzy so I've decided to get off the rollercoaster. This will be absolutely good on Friday night.
The owner is the Roy Zsiday who already has three other restaurants in the Buda Castle: the 21, the Pest-Buda, the Pierrot and he is the one, who opened the Spíler in September in the Guzsdu Udvar. I was just joking at that time, but at the of my post I thought that after Buda, Roy is going to conquer also Pest moving house by house. Now you can see who was right: here's his second place. Talking of megalomania Roy's next project is going to be another restaurant in the Buda Castle. Three places aren't enough and I think he won’t even calm down till he owns the last box that sells lángos (fried flat bread).
Now let’s get back to the ÉS. Take a look at the pictures please. This place has the same good idea like Spíler has. The place is a special mixture of the international trends and Hungarian motives. The animals painted on the tiles, the furniture and the colours are great. Not only in the pictures made by Csaba Fender but also in real life.
Roy also told us that he doesn’t want the restaurant to be a simple restaurant. He would like to think of it as a habitual residence: wifi is also available so you can work from the ÉS and he also promised that no one will be asked to leave the place because they didn’t consume anything. You don't have to feel hurry.
However it isn’t compulsory we can still eat here. I was pretty lucky because at the party organized for the bloggers of the Blog.hu the tables were always full of food so I didn’t have to calculate with any cost. Though the prices aren’t high according to the location because you cannot find anything else, that is located more centrally than the Kempinski in downtown Budapest. And we also have to mention the professionally compiled courses made by the chef Zsolt Litauszki, who also works for all the other restaurants owned by Roy.
Basically we had every kind of bites. It is good to know that the appetizers you can see in the following pictures are around 1400-1500 HUF (5 €). The fried cheese was way better than anywhere else, though it wasn’t perfect, but the ajvar sauce was absolutely great next to it.
The fried pike-perch or the crispy pork belly didn’t wake up the happily crying gastromaniac in me, but the fried chicken wings with sour cream sauce was truly great, it was a perfect dish (the reason why the following pictures aren’t so good is simple. I took them):
Later we tried the tougher competitors (these courses are more expensive, they are around 3000 HUF - 10 €). The sour pork lung with lemon became a really good friend of mine:
The beef stew was perfect. I mean perfect. Trust me, it was perfect.
The special mixture of pig feet stew and tripe has ended up in such a heavy meal I couldn’t eat it after six courses:
Of course the dry-aged sirloin was good, but the meat is from Wien (we still have problems with Hungarian ingredients):
At the end of the project I had freshly made Kaiserschmarren (light, caramelized pancake) served with homemade marmalade. I could eat it anytime.
As you can see there is no artsy-fartsy. Here you can get real Hungarian cuisine. Re-thinked just as it has to be to provide quality food. And if the next guests of Kempinski would like to get to know Hungarian cuisine through the ÉS, they are going to be on the right way to love it.
Oh, and the staff is super, most of them are girls and they are really pretty!
ÉS Bisztró
Budapest, Deák Ferenc utca 12.
0614293990
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