Best of Budapest

It used to be that we had something worthwhile to say about every second eating experience, but now we’re lucky if even one in four is worth writing about. And it’s even more uncommon to find a place we’re really crazy about, the way we used to be when we first started reviewing restaurants.

Drum roll: KIOSK is such a place. Even though it’s not new, it’s still in an experimental phase, which is made obvious by the fact that the lunch menu is only available on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. But what a menu!

We got ahead of ourselves here, so let’s back up and look at the neighborhood. Március 15 Square is a super venue, especially in the summer, but now that it’s been renovated, it’s pleasant in the winter too. KIOSK’s interior designers did a sensational job transforming the enormous interior of the main building. They took advantage of the height, and the interior is sufficiently industrial to make it clear that this place is meant for good times. Its retro furniture, ornate galleries and columns, and the sunshine flooding in through the huge windows create a fabulous atmosphere.

The menu is two courses for HUF 1350 or three courses for HUF 1750. This wouldn’t be expensive at less popular places in town, but here it’s bewilderingly cheap. A three-course meal right in the heart of the city center is the same price as a fast food meal with mayonnaise and ketchup.

Look what you get for this: vegetable soup with buttered dumplings.

Sensational. The dumplings are creamy soft. The vegetables are neither hard nor mushy; they’re crisp and fresh. The soup is marvelously clear and tastes homemade. It’s thick from all the dumplings, yet at the same time light because of the vegetables. And there’s a lot of it too.

Now on to the main course: herbed chicken leg rolls and pearl barley risotto. The description doesn’t seem so exciting, but once you feast your eyes on it, wild horses couldn’t hold you back.

The chicken is tender and by no means without character. It is rolled in bacon and intelligently seasoned, giving it a great flavor. The pearl barley is just as it should be: firm on the outside. You need a little zest to bite into it, but it’s not the kind of sticky blob you often get. Inside, it’s soft and light. A sensational dish.

After the first two courses, I was asked if I’d had my fill or if I still wanted dessert. I said I was really full but I still wanted to try the ginger and chocolate cake with lime sorbet. This is it:

Ten years ago this one would have been the best dessert in all of Budapest, but as part of a lunch menu, it’s still fantastic, outstanding.

To conclude, I had a brilliant lunch in nice surroundings with outstanding service and then paid a ridiculously small amount of money. I wonder how long the test run is going to last and how the prices will change later, but as long as the situation stays the way it is, you should give KIOSK a try because at the moment it offers one of the best values for the money in Budapest.

For now only from Wednesday to Friday, because on Monday and Tuesday there is no lunch menu and it doesn’t really have regular hours on these days.

KIOSK
Március 15. tér 4.
06-70-311-1969
Thu–Sat: 12:00–01:00
Sun-Wed: 12:00–24:00

Translation provided by Helpers Business and Immigration Services. Find us at www.helpers.hu

The store is hard to find:

Even when you get closer, it would be hard to find out what’s going on inside.

But this is only because the store is so new that it doesn’t even have a sign yet. Anyway, it’s cozy, homey and clean inside, although you might be taken aback by the decor, which is reminiscent of the Ecseri market.

I’m trying my best to describe the impressions I got during the half hour I spent leaning against the counter in this place. Don’t think of the usual kind of well-starched professional operation that does everything by the book. It’s much more exciting than that.

Although József (on the left in the picture above) adheres strictly to formal speech, he can create an intimate atmosphere in a matter of moments. “Good morning, have you already bought bread today? Everybody gets only one ticket a day. You’ll have to come back tomorrow,” he says to an elderly lady, who got the joke from his tone of voice and admits that she was nibbling on the bread on her way home and liked it so much she wants to get another one. “All right, then, which one do you want?” In the meantime, a Canadian living in the neighborhood pops in with his two children for some morning cornbread, but they were all out. That’s not a problem here. They get right down to baking, even getting the children involved. Let them help if they feel like it. The kids were flouring their own loaf with a sparkle in their eyes.

Meanwhile, the coffee is ready, and József offers everybody a cup. For me, the measure of quality is what I have to put in coffee to make it drinkable. I don’t need to put anything in this. Sugar would only ruin it. It’s great – acidic and fruity. Since it’s a fair trade, which you can’t tell from the taste, it goes down all the easier. 

Meanwhile József is telling the customers how he makes each of the breads, what kind of flour he uses and how each product is made. The croissant mentioned above comes out of the oven, and the customers snap up the entire tray in no time at all. Fortunately, I got one too. 

It’s really brilliant. Soft dough, crisp on the outside, and outrageously buttery on the inside. “You can’t get better than that in Hungary,” József says. Obviously, the real question here is not whether they’re using real butter in the dough. The question is what kind of butter. “I can’t afford French butter. This has German butter in it,” he explains.

As a clear sign of his informal, spontaneous character, József tells his customers he’s not always satisfied with himself. He had some trouble with his employees in the bakery in Budaörs. The quality was inconsistent, but this is no longer a problem here in his own store because he found the right person and he is always around to keep an eye on things. He is constantly experimenting with newer breads and always asking his customers to taste them.

I really like this store. You don’t have a chance of getting away with “aloafofbreadpleasethanksbye,” but you wouldn’t want to. The big plus, in addition to the quality of the breads, is that you just feel like dropping by at Józsi’s place to have a cup of coffee and shoot the breeze with him for ten minutes or so, get a taste of some freshly baked stuff, and then head on home loaded down with bread. Going to the bakery has a new meaning.

Pékműhely
I. Batthyány u. 24
Opening hours: 07:00 – 19:00 weekdays

Translation provided by Helpers Business and Immigration Services. Find us at www.helpers.hu

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t be writing about another sandwich place in Budapest because there has been so much about fast food on the blog lately that we should be starting to change our image.

This, however, is not a typical case.

The venue is the recently opened Cirkusz on Dob utca. It’s a spacious, airy, well-furnished place with a great atmosphere just a hop, skip and a spit from Gozsdu Court. Its focus is on coffee not sandwiches. They have their own roaster with a chimney leading out onto the street and saturating the entire neighborhood with the most marvelous aroma. The chef is Zsuzsi, a veteran of the great kitchens of Paris. I only know her first name and that she does astonishing things with a knife.

So I sat down and ordered a Rueben sandwich. The Nebraska or the New York sandwich (both Reuben Kulakofsky and Arnold Reuben claim to have invented it) is stuffed with beef, cheese, homemade mustard, and it’s simply fantastic. The quality is so good that it can be considered a sandwich only because you can pick it up in your hands. It is otherwise in a completely different dimension. The meat is tender and flaky, the homemade mustard is pungent unto ecstasy, purple cabbage abounds, and it is all in perfect balance. Each bite is so exquisitely in tune that we will be up against serious trouble when the full menu comes on line next week. From next week they will be serving duck and spare ribs, and if their standards hold true, this is where you will be getting the best value for your money in the city center.

But let’s stay with the present. The potatoes are first class. You wouldn’t believe how rarely this incredibly simple side dish is properly made, but Cirkusz has created something both original and delicious. And with the homemade mayonnaise, their potatoes can be eaten straight, and that’s exactly what I did. 

I paid HUF 2200 for a sandwich, potatoes and wine. I pigged out and drank my fill. I was on the verge of leaving when the owner grabbed me. It so happened he recognized me and forced me to try one of their desserts. Rumor has it they’re not just delicious, they’re out of this world. The Pavlova won’t be on the menu till next week, so they wouldn’t let me pay for it.

It was sheer delight. Perfect, light whipped cream, not at all sugary, crunchy outside and soft inside. All this wrapped in slices of blood orange. You’ve got to try it.

It’s fabulous that Cirkusz has opened, because there aren’t a lot of places like this in Budapest: affordable food, exceptional quality, fantastic desserts, coffee roasted on site, and a great wine list. What’s more, the party goes on every night till dawn.

Cirkusz
Dob utca 25.
06-1-786-4959
Mon–Wed: 11:00–23:00
Thurs–Fri: 11:00–00:00
Sat: 09:30–00:00
Sun: 09:30-17:00

Translation provided by Helpers Business and Immigration Services. Find us at www.helpers.hu

This place is owned by Roy Zsiday, who already has three restaurants in Budapest – 21, Pest-Buda and Pierrot. He’s also the guy who opened Spíler last September in Gozsdu Court. At the time I was just joking when I ended the article by saying I think that after taking Buda house by house, Roy will conquer Pest too. But hey, who was right again? This is the second place in Pest. By the way, now that we’re talking about delusions of grandeur, Roy’s next project will be another restaurant up in the Castle. I guess three places aren’t enough for him. He won’t be satisfied till he owns the last little fried-dough place in town.

But let’s get back to ÉS. Just look at the pictures. This place has the same decor as Spíler, and it’s also at the golden ratio of international trends and Hungarian motifs (this doesn’t really make sense). The animals painted on the tiles are nice, as are the furniture and the colors. The place looks great not only in Csaba Fender’s pictures but in real life too:

Roy also told us that he wants to make ÉS not just a restaurant but also a place people like to spend time in. There is WiFi, so you can do your work there, and Roy promised they would never ask anybody to leave just because they’re not eating and drinking all the time. And you won’t have to be in a hurry at ÉS.

But even though it’s not compulsory, you can still eat. I was lucky because as a member of the party organized for the Blog.hu bloggers, there was a non-stop flow of food to the table, and I didn’t have to worry about the cost. But the prices really aren’t so high, considering that ÉS is located in the very heart of the city center on the ground floor of the Kempinski Hotel and Chef Zsolt Litauszki makes each dish with the same care as in Roy’s other restaurants.

Basically, all we got were noshes and tidbits, but all sorts of them. It’s good to know that the starters shown in the following pictures cost about HUF 1400-1500. The breaded cheese was far better than what you can get at most places. Although I wasn’t knocked out by it, I did like the ajvar that came with it.

Nor did the breaded pike-perch or the crispy lean bacon on a skewer bring out my inner foodie screaming for joy, but the chicken wings with sour cream sauce were a laudable, great dish (the dynamic slump in quality in the pictures is due to the fact that I took them):

And then came the tougher competitors (which are more expensive, costing around HUF 3000). I made great friends with the lung stew:

The beef shin stew was perfect, I mean perfect, read my lips, it was perfect:

The third main course, the offspring of a sickly marriage between pig trotter stew and tripe, was so wonderfully heavy that I just couldn’t eat it after the previous six dishes:

The dry aged sirloin was wonderful of course, but the meat came from Vienna (there are still problems with basic ingredients in this country):

And then there was freshly made Kaiserschmarrn with home-made apricot jam at the end of the project, and I can eat this any time:

You can see there is nothing pretentious about any of this. It is typical Hungarian cuisine reinterpreted just the way it should be to meet high-quality culinary standards. And if the Kempinski’s international guests learn about Hungarian cuisine through ÉS, they are on the right track to falling in love with it.

BTW, the waitresses are super, and most of them are pretty hot too.

ÉS Bisztró
Budapest, Deák Ferenc utca 12.
Mon–Sun: 06:00-23:30
06-1-429-3990

 Translation provided by Helpers Business and Immigration Services. Find us at www.helpers.hu

The bloggers at Best of Budapest – also the founders of the greatly successful Hungarian trend-setter blog called Egy Nap a Városban [A Day in the City] – love to roam the streets of the city and by now they really know Budapest by heart. Now, in order to soothe their readers’ hunger for more English-language articles about the treasures of Budapest, they have partnered with Helpers Hungary, the country’s leading provider of comprehensive immigration, business and language solutions for foreigners living, working or doing business in Hungary. As Helpers has its own, full-fledged translation agency, the partnership truly brings you the best of Budapest: the bloggers contribute exclusive know-how and tips, while Helpers makes sure that none of the local flavor of the posts is lost in translation.

Starting in April 2015, the members of the two teams are working together to win your heart for our beautiful city. Watch this space for the credible reviews, of-the-moment updates, and truly local tips that Budapest locals read and love A Day in the City for!