Budapest Food Tour

This evening, I went on a Budapest food tour. If you didn’t guess that from the title of this entry, then either you are the sort of person who skips past titles without reading them, or your reading comprehension is in the lower percentile of the anglophone population.

First, a few related notes.

Note one: This is my third post of the day. The other posts were on my morning on Buda Castle Hill and my afternoon in the Budapest Jewish District.

Note two: Because I had an evening activity today, finished my first post after that, and only then started my afternoon post and then this one, it’s very late.

Note three: It is now well past midnight, so technically, the food tour was yesterday evening, not this evening. But I’m instituting the rule that all of tonight is part of yesterday for the purpose of this post. Read any references to “today” or “this evening” in that context.

Note four: Because of the late hour and because I’m not a night owl, I’m going to bash through this as quickly as I can. Consequently, it will probably be just brief notes, rather than my usually long, boring narrative. Lucky you. But it won’t be as complete as it should be.

The tour guide, Laura, was extremely personable and provided a lot of information not just about the food, but also the neighbourhood and its history.

The tour started outside the Orthodox Synagogue in the Jewish District of Budapest. We didn’t have any specifically Jewish dishes, but Laura explained that Hungarian cooking adopted some elements of Jewish cooking. While we were in the Jewish District, Laura pointed out a metal strip with an inscription embedded in the sidewalk that marked where one of the walls of the Jewish ghetto was.

Laura’s Budapest food tour comprised four dishes at four establishments (one per establishment), along with alcoholic beverages at three of the establishments. The drinks are another reason why this might be a somewhat brain-addled post.

Laura formed a WhatsApp group for the tour, and, after the tour, she sent a message to the group with the names of the restaurants and dishes. She used the Hungarian names, not the English ones, for the food and drinks. I have that message already and will cut and paste the names here.

Budapest Food Tour Dish One

Restaurant: Bors Gasztrobár.

Dish, soup: kalocsai sült paprikakrémleves

Laura explained that soups are very common in Budapest year-round and are typically had as starters before every meal. The soup had a paprika base (the whole vegetable, not powder), with split peas, ham and some other ingredients I forgot. I absolutely loved it. It was my favourite dish of the night. We had it in take-out cups from a street-food restaurant.

Budapest Food Tour Dish Two

Restaurant: Gozsdu Lángos

Dish: lángos

Lángos is a common, traditional dish in Budapest. It’s very light, deep-fried, garlicky dough formed into a disk. It can have a variety of toppings. Traditional is cheese and garlicky sour cream. That was the topping we had. I very much liked this dish too.

Drink: Hungarian beer, wine, or sour cherry beer. I had red wine.

Budapest Food Tour Dish Three

Restaurant: Delizia

Main dish: csirkepaprikás

The English name of this dish is chicken paprikash. It was a delicious slow-cooked chicken with a paprika sauce. It was served on a bed of Hungarian dumplings. They are sort of like Italian gnocchi, but much smaller and don’t contain any potatoes. It was also delicious. There was also sauerkraut on the side.

Drink: plum pálinka. This was a shot of a powerful, 50-proof liquor with a hint of plum.

Budapest Food Tour Dish Four

Our final stop was for dessert.

Restaurant: Colour Bar.

Dish: somlói galuska

I forgot to take a picture of this dish. Sorry about that. It was a very spongy, light chocolate cake covered in chocolate sauce. It too was very good.

Drink: Tokaji dessert wine (Angyal)

The dessert wine was semi-sweet and was similar in taste to an ice wine. I quite enjoyed it.

Okay. That’s all you’re going to get for this post. I need to go to sleep.