Whenever a long weekend comes along, we always recommend you make a quick trip outside of Budapest, and on this occasion we’ll show you a place worth checking out in Gödöllő. Gödöllő is in itself a good destination as it’s where you’ll find the Grassalkovich Palace and the Máriabesnyő shrine, to speak of nothing else. If we go another six kilometers, we can also go riding at the Domonyvölgyi stables, or take a swim in the lake located in the valley (Domonyvölgy means Domony Valley). Strictly in that order, of course.
Although you should probably take a look out the window first before heading out for a dip, the weather being as changeable as it is.
Gödöllő has its own Karcsikám (“My dear Charlie”) style restaurant (by which we mean an old school restaurant that inexplicably still manages to stay open) with a respectable kitchen serving large portions and a cut-no-corners mentality. The location by the main road is terrible, so the terrace is quite noisy, and inside everything smells of oil, but nobody’s perfect. Despite these shortcomings, there’s always a ton of cars parked in front, which is one of the primary calling cards of good places to eat out in the country. It’s hard to find an available spot at 4 in the afternoon, even though no one normally eats anything at that time.
But, they have ginormous crêpes that every sugar-junkie must try.
It’s not refined, nor elegant. You don’t have to seek out the confluence of Belgian chocolate with Bronte pistachios, because there isn't one. What you will find, however, is a plethora of fillings, including caramel, chocolate, peanuts, coconut, cream, fruit jam, and whatever else you’d like. The names refer to familiar chocolate bars, but there’s no cause for concern: whether or not it is called a Snickers makes no difference to the calorie count of your crêpe if it contains caramel, chocolate and peanuts. The same goes for the Túró Rudi (a Hungarian bar of sweet curd cheese coated in dark chocolate), which contains curd cheese, hazelnut spread, chocolate sauce and diabetes.
And what a surprise for me: each crêpe comes with a cape gooseberry, and the cream has pomegranate seeds sprinkled on top. This is rare attention to detail for a restaurant in this category.
By the way, it’s 890 Ft for one serving, after which you won’t be able to even look at anything sweet for quite a while. What we recommend is starting off with a bean soup with pork knuckle, and following it up with a crêpe. The two together are 1780 Ft, but if you go on a Monday or Thursday, everything is half price, so the whole shebang will run you 890 Ft. You can’t go wrong with that!
Sziget Restaurant
Address: 2100 Gödöllő, Szabadság út 139.
Opening Hours:
Mo-Th: 11:30am – 10pm
Fr-Sa: 11:30am – 11pm
Su: 11:30am – 10pm
Translation provided by Helpers Business and Immigration Services. Find us at www.helpers.hu
You may find the original article here.
