Best of Budapest

When I first heard about the Suttogó piano bar I decided to visit it one day. Statements: small cellar under the ground in Pest in the Hajós utca, comfy sofas, mysterious lights and a jazz pianist every night, who plays only for a few people who are there.

So one day we visited the place with Csaba. I imagined that we won't even have free seats, we will be drinking at the bar, while listening to soft laughing with Diana Krall singing in the background. And after arriving to the place under the ground we have realized what we can also see in the pictures on the homepage of the place.

photo: suttogopianobar.hu

Zona deserta. No one was there except the waitress and the pianist, who immediately jumped over to the piano and asked us what to play. We sat down to a table in a semi-dark corner and realized that after BeerCo we have found another deserted place which is worth more than that. Although we haven't felt that we have to pass by a bearded security guard having a nap in the toilet.

Because the concept of the place is really good. It reminds me of the world of the American Mafia with underground jazz-club with drinks, live music, lumpy sofas. By having taken a look at the drink list it turned out quickly that this had been exactly the purpose of the owners. Here you can read a really good short text about the prohibition of alcohol, the world of gangsters, corruption and the way how this new trend gave job to the musicians. You can also read about these illegal places called 'whisperers' and stories where the owner bought the originally 5 USD barrels of beer from Canada for 55 USD and he served it for even more. Or Owney Madden the owner of Harlem Cotton Club, who gave the opportunity to play music for such legends of the era like Duke Ellington or Billie Holiday.

The lamps on the tables looked like gilded weapons. They also amplified the atmosphere but together with Csaba we thought that it was an absolute exaggeration. Moreover they looked really fake, as if somebody had won some golden sprayed plastic fake guns at the saint's-day and had glued the lampshades to them.

And when you happen to find on the net that one piece of this table gun lamp designed by Philippe Starck designers takes 3300USD (750 000 HUF) the whiskey simply gets stuck in your throat. But as I got to know from an interview read in the Szép Házak (Nice Houses) Magazine these lamps are imitations. It is obvious that someone manufactured it in the East for a small part of the original price. Although I don't believe that Starck's lamps look like an imitation for the first sight but imitations always have this disadvantage.

So we were just sitting in the leatherette armchairs amongst the lighting fake guns absolutely alone. In the background we heard mostly Chris Rea and Csaba was looking at Django's green jacket. He told me how attentive Tarantino was when he chose the costumes because with this he commemorated to another cult film, Bonanza. He also told me that he needs a green jacket like this. We were chomping the life-saving salty thingies in front of us what we haven't even ordered.

I asked the waitress when the party will start. She told me that we are the party and if we won't stay, they won't necessarily wait till the end of the shift, so they are going to close earlier than 5 am. But it is said that on Fridays they usually have quite a bit of movement and crowd, dancing and partying in a gangster-jazz-golden gun-way. I'm afraid I won't come back at the weekend, because I don't feel like dancing for Josephine alone.

Csaba really liked the place and so did I. I was expecting something like this. Drinks are not so cheap but if we compare it to a simple pub and we also add the live music to it, we won't get a heart attack. One deciliter of wine takes 500-600 HUF (Dúzsi-Sauska-Légli lineup) and I don't feel bad if the 0.33 beer takes 700 HUF if otherwise the night has a really good atmosphere. If only we had more people here not only us.

On the way home in the Nagymező utca I have seen a queue of 100 people in front of the Peaches and Cream Club. It was around midnight and I wouldn't even expected for this, because a few minutes ago I was having some drinks in a dreamy place and now it turns out that I could have stayed in a queue for hours on the Budapest Broadway just to see Linda Zimány a few streets away.

Budapest is just as varied as it is during daytime.

Suttogó Piano Bár
1065 Budapest, Hajós u. 27.
Opening hours: Tuesday - Saturday 19-05

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It is slowly going to be an impossible mission to try each and every new place, to eat everywhere, write about everything. But what is worse - or better - is to get to really cool places because there are so many openings nowadays.

For instance regarding Aboszolút Pho I was flirting with the idea of going to the place and later a made my mind. I usually arrived before or after opening hours, but finally last week I could taste their soup, hurray. The place is so small if you don't watch yourself after stepping in, you almost stepped out of it. In this picture you can see the 70% of the restaurant.

The other 30% is that little counter where you can find shelter. There is absolutely no problem with it although it is a bit more difficult to eat Vietnamese food than a Hungarian sandwich. So if guests get used to going there like to the Bors on the other side of the street, there will be serious fights, stabbings and tribal strifes for the seats.

This why:

This is the pho. You have to pronounce it as 'fʌ'. It is a Vietnamese soup (1000 HUF) full of things that are really good for my throat which is became quite dried today morning because of the heating. It wouldn't even be a silly thing to start the day with this, because in Vietnam soup is served in the morning. But here there is no chance for that because the restaurant opens at 5 pm.

This is good anyway.

Pho is a real superb dish though it isn't so overcomplicated: there are nice and huge pieces of thinly sliced beef, some vegetables, Cantonese rice vermicelli and some kind of spice. That's all. I also put quite a lot of sriracha sauce in it which is made of chili so to be really hot. This soup makes sense this way.

Pho is basically eaten by chop sticks and it could also happen in Vietnam that some liquid remains in the bowl. Here in Hungary you no one would risk it so ideally with a complicated method you eat it with a spoon and with sticks at the same time. And after a while you realize that you don't need any witchcraft, you can simply eat it with a spoon. Let chopsticks be for those who grown up with that.

Otherwise the soup is really great, fresh and it has a real undeniable Asian taste, what you cannot say to most of the Asian restaurants in Budapest. It is more or less filling, though I am sure there will be others who will also try the caramelized pork ribs with jasmine rice and pickled green mustard, which takes 1100 HUF. It is said to be really good.

As for me I wasn't hungry anymore so I'll try it next time.

But the soup is strongly recommended and the Kazinczy utca became definitely much better with it.

Abszolút Pho
Budapest, Kazinczy u. 52.
Tu-Fr: 17:00-23:00
Sa: 18:00-23:00

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We are launching a new series on the blog http://varosban.blog.hu/ because together with you we also love series: we found out where the best burgers, gyros' and ice creams are in Budapest and now so to fill the gap we are about to search for restaurants where we can get decent Hungarian food on a reasonable price.

The idea came to our mind together with Adam: when our friends are looking for a restaurant we can always offer them something. But when they would like to show the Hungarian cuisine for a few thousand HUF to their foreign friends, usually we get confused. We know places which prepare pretty good international meals at a reasonable price. And we also know places where perfect Hungarian meals can be consumed – at an upper price category.

But then we are just scratching our heads nervously when we have to offer a high quality, Hungarian place at a reasonable price. This is how the 'I'd like to eat something Hungarian' series were born. Its first station is big gun right away: The Kádár.

The restaurant was established in 1957 by Béla Kádár, whose name was similar to the leader of the country at that time. The story has a beautiful frame structure because the owner nowadays is Mr. Orbán, who owns the restaurant for more than 20 years. Though twenty years ago Antall was the prime minister.

But the story isn't only about the owner: he is the cook, he is the one, who goes around and has a chat with the guests, who are sometimes foreigners. He is the one who welcomes the regular guests and he is also the cashier. You can pay him next to the entrance. It is like an honor based cash register.
Trustworthy place, there's no problem with it.

The Kádár is absolutely cozy mainly because of the owner and the staff: for example Katika who served our food and who is working there since 1987. And the clichés are of course pretty funny: checked table covers from the lower middle class of the 70s and 80s, soda-water siphons on the table, engaging soc-real environment, pictures and signs on the wall:

There are places which become simply successful. There's nothing to do with quality, because there are several great competitors and nobody cares about them, until someone turns the spotlight on them.
Quality is important but that's not all. You need a good concept, loads of money to advertise the opening, good location and something eye-catching plus.

Loud music is a good example for that in Spíler which has just opened in Gozsdu Udvar: If I were living in the neighborhood I would have doused the place with petrol and set it on fire. But I don't live there and neither live most of the people from Budapest so we are absolutely lucky for having this place somewhere halfway between everything and which is an adequately original thingy that is impossible to categorize.

Short background introduction: the owners aren't beginners. They own every second restaurant in the Castle district, the Pest-Buda, the Pierrot and the 21. They are only a few blocks away from each other. And behind these there is Roy Zsiday who came from his gourmet-tower from Buda. But he did not went straight to the other side of the Danube. He only did it after an inspiring tour in New York to create a more lighter, younger, Pest-like high quality ruin pub-disco-wine bar-pub-club-coalafishmutantbird-combo.

And he did it so well.

The Spíler is a unique place in Budapest despite some mistakes at the beginning and its created fake past (it is strongly communicated to make believe that at the beginning of the 20th century there has already been a place called Spíler, but not). Leastwise I haven't seen any club like this before.

The interior is freaking smart. The interior decorator did not want to self-realize his own, said past. At first sight Spíler is a perfectly mature job in which everything was created by the same drive and verve beginning with the lights, the placement of the open kitchen, through the uniform of the staff and the loud anglo-saxon electronic music till the restrooms. And it also fits to the eclectic feeling that the modern music is only played from vinyl by the DJ from the restaurant and the trendy bar with the 17 meters wide counter where the owners great-grandfather has worked in his workshop as a mechanic engineer before the World War.

The menu is also interesting. You can only find meals in the Spíler you will never meet anywhere else. Neither in downtown Budapest nor in other places like this. While it is unique it is quite hard to compare it to anything else, but one thing is sure. It is not a cheap place though you can also eat a lot with a little money. Except if you order the truly great homemade grilled sausage made with Tokaj wine, which isn't as big as you would like it to have for 1200 HUF.

But you can have stodgy flamed pies between 1500-2000 HUF and also spud (jacket potato) with every kind of special sauces for 500-700 HUF. A hamburger takes 1300 HUF which isn't that much but with potato and salad it is much over 2500 HUF. So if we take a look at the Spíler this way it is obviously in the higher price category. But you also get quality with it.

First of all the sauce itself makes the jacket potato a real dinner. And we also have to appreciate Spíler for experimenting with such meals you cannot have anywhere else and aren't typical. Otherwise the potato with this cheese and jalapeno sauce was really good and if you order a hamburger and a craft beer besides that it is still only around 2500 HUF and you could eat and drink well. In this environment this price is absolutely perfect (you only have to be careful with the sausages).

And now let's commemorate the hamburger which is called the best burger of the country. I would doubt that, but if we consider that a burger is made of a piece of meat, traditional bun with cheese, ketchup and mustard, then it is really hard to create anything else that is everlasting. The decoration is alright and the strange meat is truly wonderful. Altogether with Adam we swear on the Ring-Manga-Cowboy-Pántlika kind of experimentation, the value added, but according to the original recipe we cannot say any bad word about Spíler's burger.

The place has just opened so smaller uncertainties occur. For example after our arrival the kitchen has stopped working and did not accept other orders, but the staff handled the situation so professionally, calmly, kindly and empathically which is quite rare in Hungary, we just didn't care and waited till our food was ready. And it was worth waiting.

If you are around and they have free seats just pop in because Spíler can show you something new in this slowly oversupplied market and if we take a look at the quality the prices are also reasonable. I am sure that with this beginning after the Castle district the downtown of Pest will also be conquered by Roy and his team, restaurant by restaurant.

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You are walking along the Kazinczy utca and you get to the turn that makes this whole street so adorable. You are just staring in front of you to see what is behind the turn and you simply miss to notice the Kazimír bistro. I have also passed it more than a dozen times before I have realized that 'Hey, there's a place'

Which is quite good. You will not believe your eyes if you enter the backyard. It is so organized and everything is so calm as if you were in a rich small town in the countryside and not in the middle of the party district of Budapest.

The atmosphere won't be different inside it is just a little bit more urbanized. There is nothing trendy inside. This place is rather classical and calm, like the secessionist synagogue on the other side. Just take a look at the door pattern on the right side of the picture:

And now let's take a look outside through the window:

Of course I haven't noticed this before. Usually I do not notice things. Though I have seen that the walls are decorated by the paintings of Marcus Goldson.

Goldson's paintings cannot be mistaken because he represents our Budapest in such a kind way like no one else, who was born here. By the way my first post was about him on my hungarian blog (http://varosban.blog.hu/) more than three years ago (ok, not the first one but the fortieth, but according to the other thousand posts so far it is amongst the first ones).So the interior is great. It also contributes to the atmosphere that usually the Kazimír isn't full of guests, there isn't a huge crowd, which is obviously an unpleasant circumstance for the owners.However it is open until 4 am. I cannot imagine better shelter than this during the night. Teas and coffees are alright, the staff is kind and even if you have ordered something in a stupid way and you also know that he knows that it was your mistake they handle the situation with a huge smile and they bring more milk or whatever you need without a word.And the menu is great. Let's start with the chicken soup. You won't eat anything like this even at your grandma:

Let's take a look at it bit closer:

It is full of meat! With huge, delicious pieces of meat. It is almost a whole chicken. And you can also find the heart of the chicken in it. Not only one, but more than that. And fresh vegetables too. I swear this was the best traditional soup I have ever eaten in Budapest so far. The mushroom with sour cream and pepper was also delicious but not as good as the soup. The noodle was quite good, but somehow you could taste too much caraway in it. It wasn't that bad, but sometimes less is more.

However, you must try the apple strudel. A whole chicken was grinded into the soup and in this case something beautiful has happened to the apple. If I were an apple I would die in a pastry like this:

Good news is that the food is not only great, but also cheap: a three course meal is for 1190 HUF only. You have to visit the Kazimír bistro so it could stay there for a long time. Talking of Kazimír... you have to watch 'Kasimir and Karoline' in Örkény Theater, because that's a really good play.

Kazimír bistro
Budapest, Kazinczy utca 34.
0617985747
Mo-Fr: 08:00-04:00
Sa-Su: 10:00-04:00

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