Eat in Budapest

Businessmen discussing with serious look on their face behind the huge windows of the ground floor of this Bauhaus building overlooking the prestigious Szent István park is a typical scene during the week at Dunapark Kávéház.

The weekend is different: the place transforms into a family place offering great ice-creams, delicious cakes and refreshing cocktails to guests occupying mostly the open terrace.

For celebrity spotting, both weekend and working days are ideal.

First time visitors encounter large spaces, minimalist decoration and snobbish service.

As opposed to its look, as a restaurant the place carries the burdens of some of our worst heritage from the past 50 years: food without character, use of Vegeta  and other spices in excess and without any concept.

My overall conclusion is that during the weekend it’s a rather expensive café worth a visit but should be avoided even if you’d put it on your expenses account during the week.

 

 

 

Ráday utca used to be a rather bohemian street with bars and pubs filled with university students and recent graduates.

The landscape has changed since real estate prices soared because of the near universities, being in a relatively safe neighborhood and having affordable real estate prices. So did the nightlife and the day life: may new bars opened and lately restaurants too as the number of office buildings and consequently the number of yuppies started to increase in the area few years ago. Just recently LeRoy shut down only few months after its opening. Soul Café, its major direct competitor which open first, is still in place and remains the only relatively sophisticated and chick restaurant of the street (I must emphasize the word relatively here). During my last visit however, it was almost totally empty in plain lunch-time (Ok, it’s July, but still).

Based on three visits in 2 years I’m now able to tell that Soul Café suffers from the illness of most Budapest restaurants: after a good start and uprising beginning in popularity they (assumingly) change ownership or simply lose their momentum and fall into a mud of boredom and ordinariness. I thinkit’s at least partly due to the schizophrenia caused by their will to satisfy both low-budget tourists and yuppies in the same time. Soul Café is searching for its personality. The service people are a bit too formal for a casual place like this, the food is inconsistent and prices tend to be too high for the target market segment (better-paid office workers).

It’s very interesting how competition cannot increase quality in this part of Budapest, near the city center. This by the way is a typical Hungarian phenomenon which can be perfectly studied in Ráday Street.

So if you’re in a rush and you’re in the neighborhood Soul Café is a preferred choice if you want to eat in a fusion restaurant. If you have a few minutes more and open for something just a little bit less ordinary, then you’d better visit the Pata Negra tapas bar at Kálvin tér, which is the closest place of interest as long as eating is concerned.