Best of Budapest

Attention! The following post is about a rummage sex shop. Only those who aren’t afraid of what we have found inside shall read on!

If only you knew for how long I’ve been thinking of getting through this entrance:

It gives a special, instinctive perversion coming from deep inside when you see the words ’sex’ and ’rummage’ next to each other. As if someone would sell ’humanburger’ or ’friendly execution’. You beleive and doubt it.

As a matter of fact it ain’t easy to think that a rummage sex shop could be good. But it is always in your mind, because of the question: what could be inside? Dumped dildos? Used condoms? A silicone vagina, which was overly enlarged at an outrageous party?  Thousands of questions, but in the past year since I've found this place my curiosity couldn’t defeat my resistance.

But finally in the past days I grabbed the door handle and I stepped into THE SHOP.

So there aren’t such exciting things you think of because of the name of the shop. There are sex toys indeed, but they aren't second hand toys. They are rather outlets: out-of-fashion dildos, old, black and yellow thingies with pumps dumped together into a box.

And all the others: DVD-s and magazines. You can also find some Kretén magazines (Hungarian humour magazine between 1994-2009) and some papers with fart jokes, but they sell mostly porn, but they don’t even look used. They are obviously old but they are covered in foil and waiting to be bought by someone. Maybe they are unsold magazines bought off by the retailer and now he would like to sell it this way. Anyway it is more reassuring than thinking of someone had been using them before.

At least there isn't any problem with the DVD-s. The discs are quite far from the user while they are using it, so you can also eagerly buy the used ones. The films are around 1000 HUf and you can find several types of it.

Mainly that’s all. Two little rooms, magazines, DVD-s and out-of-fashion vibrators are inside for a reasonable price. There are no silicone implants taken back from the bank as a loan or used porn actress in the shop.

Retro Szexturkáló
Budapest
Dob utca 17.

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I have written this writing long ago, but I was a little bit uncertain posting it. In our series where we are looking for the best Hungarian food we are concentrating on meals that can be chosen from a menu at a reasonable price. The Fülemüle is a bit more expensive than the average (and also has better quality) so we have chosen from the lunch menu what we evaluated this situation as a ground of refusal later on. There is only one reason why we wanted to have this post: last Friday András Singer the legendary owner of the restaurant passed away. He was also in the restaurant when we tested the place. I myself did not know him but I know that he was an absolutely significant person in the life of the gastronomy of Budapest. So now we break the rules of the series and in the memory of Mr. Singer we post the latest writing of the series.

So many of you have suggested trying this restaurant in the eighth district in the Kőfaragó utca, which is the fourth competitor of our series presenting the Hungarian restaurants at a reasonable price after Kádár, Róma ételbár and Nótafa. It is a bit similar to Kádár, because it is also in Pest and has Hungarian-Jewish cuisine where cholent has the main role on Saturdays.

On the other hand it is totally different than the others: it also has a retro feeling, but not in a lower middle class way like the other two with the checked table cover. Fülemüle is rather like time travel in which we live in the Goulash communism in 2012, but during the time travel an error occurred and the time machine had sucked up a civil canteen from 1931 and the whole year of 1993.

Altogether the place is friendly, homely full of personal articles and photos. Thank to owner András Singer who also have been to Moscow everything is full of socialist-communist souvenirs. Everything is decorated with these inside: there is a sign from the KISZ (Hungarian Young Communist League) Committee of the City of Moscow and from the Moscow Youth Club. We can see a photo in which Gyula Horn and Ferenc Gyurcsány (former socialist prime ministers) are having their meal and another one in which we can see a little child holding a 'Thank you Feri' sign. It looks like that the tip of the scale is strongly on the left, but a good kitchen always has to be well balanced. That's why we can also see portraits of pontificates only a few meters from the photos of Horn and neither the photo of Navracsics (right-wing politicians) would like to fall off the wall because of the closeness of Gyurcsány.

Isn't it wonderful?

The place was absolutely empty at quarter past two despite the famously active regular guests. Only I had to be served by the very polite waiter and sometimes Mr. Singer, who is usually sitting idly in the restaurant as a good owner.

I started with a meat soup, with vermicelli. It wasn't that characteristic and greasy as the soup in Róma ételbár, but it was also totally good and what for more, some people would rather like this moderate taste. Ingredients were also fresh. Real vegetables and real spices were in the soup and the paprika served next to the soup was sliced right before bringing the first course to me. So it was absolutely alright.

For second course I picked grilled fillet of pork with homemade pickles, which looks like this:

I was satisfied. Though it was a daily lunch offer, the meat was freshly grilled (I had to wait for it which is always a good sign and I could also hear it crackling on the grill). It was juicy, hot and bravely seasoned. A bowl of mixed pickles was a great choice for a side dish. At least it wasn't potato or rice. These homemade mixed pickles (with loads of bread) gave me what we are looking for in this series: the abandoned joy of guzzling. I only had problem with the bread. Something more exciting and fresher bakery good would be better.
At the end came the pancake with honey and poppy-seed. It was quite a brutal ending of the lunch, mostly because of the powdered sugar that covered everything. It also contained lots of grease and poppy-seed, though there could have been more honey on it.

Altogether Fülemüle is an absolutely correct place. The three courses at noon took 2100 HUF plus the drinks and the service fee, so if somebody gets to the place and goes in to have a lunch must have around 2600 HUF for it.

Or let's say: if somebody wants to visit the place.

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Anytime we are talking about Budapest and having a coffee, most of us think about this:

And this:

The New York and the Centrál cafe are older than Mathuselah. They are from the age when Budapest was a real cafe-superpower. If we visit these places we feel like we are at the turn of the century again, when there have been more than 60 cafes in Nagykörút and nine cafes between the Oktogon and Podmaniczky utca. The golden age of Budapest. The city what as we know it today was built in these times. Poets were sitting next to the marble tables, having their breakfasts and joking loudly with the well read waiters.

How does a cafe look like nowadays?

This is the Espresso Embassy in the Arany János utca. It is clear, simple and because of the raw bricks it looks big. The counters at the back are similar to the ones in a coworking office, so everybody's staring at their laptop and two of them are talking to each other in English. One of them is explaining something and the other one is nodding his head, so it might be a kind of tutoring.

But what is more important than the atmosphere is the quality of the coffee. This is the new criterion, which points out the difference between good and bad places. The stories coming from the turn of the century do not mention where you could have better coffee – or if there was a difference it wasn’t that big. The ’quality’ of the guests made the difference. And nowadays the difference is made by where the coffee beans are roasted, which plantation are they from and what kind of technique is used to make the coffee.

You can feel the massive contrast between the raw brick walls and the soft taste of the coffee. Because here they are working with the same Has Bean coffee, what you can also find at Pinta, or at the Tamp&Pull (Probably Attila Molnár, the owner of Tamp&Pull is the supplier of this place too). Attila swears on this brand because only real, selected quality coffee beans are used which are coming from small producers. You can only buy them until they are on stock, so the contents of the red bags are always changing. The coffee beans are gently roasted so we can still feel the fruity aroma and flavour. Later on it is gently scalded with specially filtered water on a temperature of 89-94 C°.

The result is the same, just like at the Tamp&Pull. We get a rich, sour but great coffee. It would be a shame to put sugar in it. I only had some milk in it: I usually drink cortado, which is basically a double ristretto (twice as strong as espresso) with some warm milk. The coffee of the week was the Bolivia Copacabana. According to the English description on the bag the proper expression for this type of coffee is 'yellow'. It is mainly because of the apricot, orange and mango flavour. I'm not a professional, so I accept it. Though I can really feel the fruit in the beetroot orange pie, it is unbelievably tasty.

So in a brand new cafe you have the place of your laptop and you can start working. The question before the order is always the same 'what kind of coffee are we going to drink now?'. Here you come to have a gastronomic experience. Behind the counter professional baristas at work and the owner has also won some kind of championship in this field (in this case Tibor Várady, who won the category of Aeropress Brewers, whatever it means). The interior is minimal, which is quite raw somewhere, but bright. And also cozy, as a friend of mine told me who came home from London.

Oh, and the filtered water is for free, make yourself at home:

I really hope that the atmosphere of the more than hundred years’ old cafes with bow ties and spoon clattering remain and the new trend won’t take away this feeling. Or I have an idea: what if they start to offer high quality coffee too so there won’t be any chance for that.

Espresso Embassy
Arany János u. 15
Opening hours Mo-Fr: 7-19, Sa: 9-19

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Usually similar sentences like these occur when you are talking to a friend of yours:

Before we went to the Kolor …
After we have left the Kolor …
We were about to go to the Kolor, but …

So anyway a new star has born in only a few weeks. The Kolor had its opening at New Year’s Eve, next to the entrance of the Gozsdu udvar in the Király utca. Later on at the end of January these sentences mentioned above became quite frequent.

So to Quote Gábor ‘Slash-ticket’ Vörös: ‘how could this be?’

Well, the staff of the Kolor was quite active during 2012, though not here. They organized parties especially in places like ‘No one-would-have-thought-that-a-party-can-be-organized-even-here'. So, on a ferryboat, at the Honvéd Lovarda (Honvéd Riding School), or at the Közvágóhíd (a junction named after the slaughter-house nearby). Then they didn‘t have to look for places anymore because finally they found one.

When I first stepped in the place reminded me of the Spíler. But now I’m not talking about imitation or reproducing. It is simply trendy nowadays. Sophisticated and well-designed interior made by designers (or amateurs with good taste) with moderate lights, simple, not so flashy and comfy tables and chairs, a DJ setup, good drinks and similarly enjoyable hot food. Csaba called it Ruin pub 2.0 referring to the basic idea of this unique phenomenon of Budapest.

Or we can say that we can easily imagine having a good guitar concert and drinking beer in a ruin pub, while in this new place we rather think about the music provided by a DJ and drinking tequila. This is the way the look of Budapest at night moved to. Opening a place with tables, draught beer, salty sticks and waiting for the guests to come in is not enough. Or not in Budapest anymore.

You need a place where the community is also good. Where you post the following to the facebook page of the place:

‘Hello! Yesterday somebody stole my purse in Kolor. I had many important documents in it, like my ID card and my address card among other things. My purse is black, made of leather with a zipper. If somebody knows anything about it please contact me on this phone number:...'

… and tomorrow you can write the following under the post:

‘You, who sent me back my purse in a priority mail without touching it and what for more *anonymously* you are the coolest man on Earth!!! : ) the credit of kolor is checked and all right, reckless person, who left the purse is present!

Joy and happiness” : )’

Because things like these exist.

So we are in the Kolor. At night it is full of people, although the place itself isn’t small. It reaches out till the courtyard and ends almost at the Spíler. Amongst dozen other clubs, these two pubs are the tractive force of the Gozsdu udvar and during the summer they can easily rearrange the route of the partygoers (and maybe the most secret pub of Budapest will also get more customers).

We can see the texture of the brick wall above us, but the unfriendly bedpan-looking lampshades are already, cleverly covered with a wooden rack. With this little practical thing the whole interior became unique and cozy.

However in the Kolor we couldn’t feel the sophisticatedly detailed idea of design. For instance the toilet is so hopelessly awful, it couldn’t be refined either with a huge 'ruin pub' or ‘ruin graffiti'.

At the back the colorful neon lights give us a bit more mysterious atmosphere. Blade Runner fans would love this part of the place. And here you can see the terrace which isn’t ready yet and where we are likely to bib during spring.

But what? On the wall you can only see the distilled spirits written because their price looks better, but we can also have better. For example real tequila, made of blue agave. Those, who haven’t tasted it before cannot imagine how good the original one could be after the ‘drink it with lemon and salt’ with that little red hat type of tequila.

Except if they run out of tequila – or they don’t even have it – and you order gin instead of it. The bartender puts out the drinks in front of you and meanwhile he is constantly telling the interesting story of the gin. The excise duty had to be roughly increased long ago because guzzling gin became an endemic.

Really, because people didn't have to have permission for making gin in England before 1736, while taxes were really high on imported beverages. Moreover gin could also be made of poor quality grain because mostly juniper berries gave the taste of it (in a good case, or turpentine in a bad case) .

So we don't have to be afraid at these drinks and even fully-ripe fruits are added to the Tanqueray in the middle, not only the skin of the fruit. I have decided to choose this one, after our bartender analyzed also the taste of the drinks. So the service is great - which is fortunately an expectation most of the places must deal with.

What else do we have? Oh, yes, food. We have chosen one goulash soup for two. A real Hungarian dish, which isn't so complicated but also easy to mess it up. It was absolutely good, like on Sundays at home. The meat was alright, the soup was tasty and the portion was huge (in the picture you can the half of it).

Prices are reasonable. You can have distilled spirits for around 700 HUF and quality drinks for twice as much. Wines are also at a really good level of quality. There isn’t a wide range of variety. The most expensive wine is the Sauska 13, One and a half deciliter for 1000 HUF (it takes 3000 HUF in the stores, so it's ok). For the soup we paid 800 HUF.

But Kolor isn’t only about this place. Inspiring presentations like TED are organized by the Kolor projekt, the Vírus Klub and the Vírus Pszichó. In the courtyard you can also watch movies you have never seen in Hungary before and parties are organized in the cellar. Soon we will also visit these, because we really like as the club participates in the everyday life of the community gathered around it. And vice versa.

Kolor
1075 Budapest, Király utca 13
Opening hours:
Monday: 12:00 - 4:00
Tuesday - Wednesday: 12:00 - 12:00
Thursday - Saturday: 12:00 - 4:00
Sunday: 12:00 - 12:00

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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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