New York Café and Hungarian cuisine as food traditions in Budapest
Meat stews, casseroles, steaks, roasted pork, beef, poultry, lamb or game and the Hungarian sausages (kolbász) and winter salami are a major part of Hungarian cuisine and their mixing of different varieties of meat is a traditional feature. Goulash, stuffed peppers, stuffed cabbages or Fatanyéros (Hungarian mixed grill on wooden platter) can combine beef and pork, and sometimes mutton. Also various kinds of noodles and dumplings, potatoes and rice are sometimes served as a side dish. The Hungarian cuisine uses a large variety of cheeses, but the most common are túró (a fresh quark cheese), cream cheeses, ewe-chese (juhturó), Emmentaler, Edam and the Hungarian cheese Trappista.
When my wife Diane and I was in Budapest, we tried some Hungarian cuisine in various restaurant and here are some of the highlights (click all pics to bigify and enjoy):
Some of our starters:
Goulash soup
Left: Goose lever paté & Cheese – Right: Sausages; winter or ‘pick’ salami
Some of the main courses:
Left: Roasted leg of duck – Right: Grilled fillet of pork and bacon
We had our portion of dessert too of course: Gundel Pancake (pancakes served flambéed in dark chocolate sauce filled with ground walnuts) – delicious! (Sorry, no pics of that).
You can get a decent meal in Budapest from 30€ and upwards and the service is excellent. I hope you’re not the hamburger or fast-food type of person when travelling, because then you’ll miss a lot of the local history, traditions and habits – in Bulgaria particularly!
Budapest’s New York Café:
You find this beautiful café in the ground floor of a luxury Hotel New York Palace (Hungarian: New York-palota) on the Grand Boulevard of Budapest’s Erzsébet. Built by an insurance company as a company hall, New York kávéház was a long time center for Hungarian literature and poetry, almost from its opening on October 23rd 1894:
From the first decade of the twentieth century it became renowned as a real literary café one of the centre of the intellectual life of Budapest; Writers and journalists had their Home Circle here. Shortly after, the editorial office of the highest standard literary periodical of the age “Nyugat” (“West”) found its home here, too. Gyula Krúdy, Ferenc Molnár, Zsigmond Móricz, Dezső Kosztolányi created their first writings here. This café is also where Sir Alexander Korda – director of films such as The Private Life of Henry VIII & The Thief of Baghdad – started out for his world award winning career, just as Michael Curtis, Oscar winning director of Casablanca did too. Pongrác Kacsó found inspiration in the atmosphere of the Café to compose his famous opera John the Hero as did Imre Kálmán the famous operetta composer when creating several of his celebrated pieces whilst seated in the New York.
We had a nice cup of coffee with sweets of course, and here is a glance of the interior:
Left: The Café interior – Right: Roof decoration
Our servings:
Left: Chocolate cake – Right: Cheese cake with apricot jam
In total: 10€
This is the last of five posts from our adventures trip in beginning of June 2009. I hope you enjoyed our guided tour as much as we did when exploring this beautiful city. My wife has posted about it too of course. Click to experience our adventures through Diane’s eyes!
#0: All pics from Budapest at my Flickr account.
#1: Budapest the capital of Hungary in the Heart of Europe
#2: House of Terror and Dohany Great Synagogue
#3: Andrassy Avenue with Heroes Square, City Park and Millennium Underground
#4: Hungarian paradise on Margaret Island and Park
#5: This post
40 Responses to “New York Café and Hungarian cuisine as food traditions in Budapest”
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Hi there, thank you for that. I was trying to find a warming stew recipe to get me through the xmas time, and this seems just what I wanted. I found an entire stew recipes site here too that seems to have loads of good ideas, maybe your readers can get some more inspiration there. Anyway, thanks, I will bookmark and read more another time
This city looks very delicious
well i want to know sir, is it expensive food ? I love the duck food
Dear Renny,
honest congratulation to your blog you made about Budapest and the New York Café! I saw this café first 30 years ago and I went there with tourists several times, I know it, but you seem to know it better! You made beautiful pictures there, you have good eyes and feeling for that! Good job.
I hope I can meet you again in Budapest.
Andrea Turcsanyi
Fly Then Smile Dental Service Budapest
mr renny , I thin you should insert the recipes , so that readers learn to cook the food, like me , I write about recipe
Budapest is at the top of my list of places to see before I kick the bucket, Renny!
Looks very yummy and well served.
good food and spectacular places!!what can you ask for more?
The food in Budapest was fantastic, and the New York Cafe was naturally one of my favourite places!! I look forward to visiting it again.
Looks like some good eating going on!
what a palace! For once I’ve eaten already so I’m not craving all of the foods on the photos…
Looks like you were treated like a king!
BTW I love your blog!
Such reports are very good and similar experience with the promotion of mouth advertising. The pictures and the experiences shared by visitors is very positive and realistic, because in fact a beautiful city Budapest. Here is the king of Hungary on the Gundel pancakes, the pancakes, which you can find photo: http://tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:htKOsogDY0_iLM:http://www.gundel.hu/etterem/upload/414_1.jpg
what a palace! For once I’ve eaten already so I’m not craving all of the foods on the photos…
Looks like you were treated like a king!
I’m so happy to see your great shots from my homeland Hungary. The Hungarian food is delicious but also rich on calories….LOL…I came everytime back with some pounds more….
And Budapest is a fascinating city, I have visited it many many times and still not have seen everything. It’s time to go back again…
Susanne
Budapest looks delicious!
Sounds you had great time in Budapest tasting the food and enjoy such wonderful Palaces!
The food looks yummy, as usual, Renny. Not too different than you could find in some of the upscale restaurants here in the States, although I don’t know how the prices would compare.
I’ve enjoyed your mini tour of Hungary, and thanks for allowing us to experience it with you and Diane.
Happy weekend!
Love and hugs,
Diane
Hei Renny, you’ll do Shantanu proud with this post!
those look so delicious, now i have to go eat
All that good food
Now you post that bench from Mariestad so we can really sit down and enjoy it!!
did you mention chocolate cake?
What an amazing building! You do love your food!
OMG! You’re making me droooling now! Luckily hubby is cooking dinner for me right now!!!!!
I LOVE that paintings in the ceiling. So wonderful I could break my neck by continuing looking at it all the time!
The restaurant looks amazing and the food looks tasty and beautiful. I wish I was in Budapest to try this restaurant.
Yummyyyy
Thank you for dropping by and keeping in touch, your very lucky to be able to travel, sure sounds wounderful, and you take great photogragphs…Have a fab weekend !!!
You know I love the pik salami! Oh it is the best.
Btw, Renny I check the Google Friends on your sidebar and it is actually working fine. People just need a google account or the following accounts stated there to access it. That’s what you meant yesterday right? About this google-thingy that was not working properly.
Thanks for taking your time on this my blog designer!
I know the follow function works – it this link (on the upper right corner in the box) that does not work properly.
I have not implement it correctly I guess.
Oh yeah, now I see it too. I will check on it and see what it is. Well, notify you once I figure it out. TC
Thanks Charles, your such a good friend. I hate it when links don’t work you know.
You too TC and send my regards to Odd
Would you look at that! Awesome photos and the food looks sooo delectable!
The food is always so very good here. Eye appealing and yummy. Thanks.
Have a terrific day and weekend. Big hug to you and Diane.