The Unappetizing Truth About Eating in Budapest

While doing research for this section, we came across the following sentence in the introduction to another online guide to eating out in Budapest:

It used to be the case that to eat really well in Budapest, you either had to do some homework in advance, pay top whack at a fancy restaurant, or stay with a local family to enjoy the authentic taste of a Hungarian kitchen.

Unfortunately, it still is!

While Hungarian culinary life has undergone a profound and largely positive revolution since the collapse of communism, the caveats listed above remain very much in force in Budapest and Hungary as a whole.

It looked tastier in the photo

In fact, the challenge of finding a good meal at a good price in Budapest may be greater than at any time in the past decade. Over the past few years the city has been flooded with numerous new restaurants, most of them of indifferent quality, and many much worse. And thanks to galloping inflation and the strengthening of the forint vis-à-vis many currencies during 2002-2004, eating out in Hungary has ceased to be the bargain it was just a few years ago. Even paying top whack at a fancy restaurant does not guarantee you an enjoyable or even passable meal.

This doesn't mean you can't get a good meal in Budapest, with good service and at a fair price. You just have to do your homework, or let someone do it for you. And by doing your homework we don't mean leafing through the advertising-driven restaurant guides you'll find scattered around town, trolling one of the never-updated and everything-but-the-kitchen-sink restaurant guides that litter the Internet, or - we shudder at the thought - asking the concierge at your hotel.

That's where the Top 33 comes in. Knowing the challenge that both visitors and even intrepid locals face when looking for a place to eat, we've developed a list of what we believe are 33 restaurants that meet or surpass current international restaurant standards in the areas that count most: quality of food and service, ambience, consistency, authenticity and, taking them together, overall value for money.

While we think each of the restaurants on our list should be proud of their inclusion, we are not going to copy other publications and start handing out "Top 33" awards to those that make the cut. For one thing, we believe such awards, at least in Budapest, have been almost fatally compromised by the apparent willingness of some to trade awards for advertising contracts or to otherwise cook the books. But there is another, even more important reason you'll never see a lovingly-framed "Top 33" award on the wall of a Budapest restaurant. Things go up and down very quickly in the restaurant world, and, with only 33 spots to go around, by the time we had printed up the certificates and had them framed, the list is likely to have changed. In fact, if you visit the Top 33 enough, you may get to see someone dropped and someone added in real-time.

Fast, cheap and ooooooh-sooo-good

Before we move on to our current list, a few pointers. While there are numerous restaurants in Budapest serving excellent Hungarian food only during the day - they are called étkezdes - the Top 33 is generally limited to restaurants (étterems) that serve dinner, and favors what you might call "white tablecloth" establishments. There is also a bit of what in America is sometimes called "affirmative action," to reflect the international tastes of most likely users of the Top 33. This does not mean, however, that we will feel obliged to include, for example, an Indian, Spanish or vegetarian restaurant just for the sake of diversity.

Finally, as for why we decided to limit our list to a seemingly arbitrary number like 33, one answer is that it helps to remind us and everyone else that in the end all such lists or rankings are largely arbitrary in nature. You can, however, help us make the Top 33 as truthful and useful as possible, by sending us your observations, tips and insights to tips - at - pestiside.hu.

So without any further ado, we present the current Top 33, complete with thumbnail reviews and all the necessary contact information. Enjoy it, and jó étvágyat!