Eat Drink Man Woman------

.....with apologies to Ang Lee and the film by this name that he made a few years back. But what better way to describe the marvelous gustatory experiences we had while in Hungary?

I'll begin with a small outdoor cafe, Platan, (introduced in my last post) that lay only a block away from our hotel, curbside to a busy confluence of streets and trams. Here we enjoyed several glasses of local beer and wine while relaxing from our hikes up to Citadella and Castle Hill. Here, also, I learned that the word for cake is "marlinka" and realized that "alma" means apple in Hungarian. Why didn't I know that? One late morning we watched a very elderly woman walking slowly past, heavy shopping bags in hand, with her very elderly dog on a leash, his tongue hanging out, both of them looking oh so tired while traffic rushed past them.



Here we are at one of our favorite "local" etterems (restaurant), Tabani Kakas Etterem, where the delightful waitress moved around as quickly as a hummingbird. Beneath her photo is our table with Jim's glass of beer and the glass of what is now my favorite wine, an exquisite white with flavors of citrus and rose petals, yes, rose petals! The name? Szoke Irsai Oliver 2007. The Hungarian wines were all delectable, and who cares if a recent news report says that Hungarian and Slovakian wines are dangerously high in metals, along with wines from other countries in Europe? For this wine, I'd risk just about anything! It's heavenly.




Only a few blocks from our hotel, along the river, we discovered the Cafe Marvelosa (www.marvelosa.eu) with an artistic menu, if ever there was one, with entrees bearing such titles as the Frida Kahlo, the Kandinksy, and so on. My entree was vegetable pancakes, crepes with grilled vegetables and cheese, with sour cream atop them. I want to try to duplicate this dish now that I'm home. No, no, I said to dessert, but Jim decided he wanted the cottage cheese dumplings. There were two of them on the plate, topped with cinnamon and powdered sugar, sitting in a puddle of sweetened sour cream. Where are the words to describe how luscious these dumplings were? I haven't come up with them yet!



We spent a scenic afternoon at Duna Corso, right beside the Danube, an outdoor cafe where you can watch the passersby stroll along while you sip your wine and eat, very slowly your, meal, which for us was a leg of goose for Jim (and what a gorgeous leg it was!) and Chicken Paprika for me.


(looking toward Castle Hill)


(you can see the Citadella and the Liberation monument in the distance)

On our last day in Budapest, we walked along the Danube to Angelika, surely one of the most beautiful restaurants I've ever seen. It was once the gathering place for poets and artists decades ago, and I tried to imagine how extraordinary it would have been to gather with a group of my friends at one of the tables near the window.



We decided to indulge only in coffee and pastry, saving our dinner for another favorite restaurant, Menza, for later on.



Isn't the interior gorgeous? I took several photos till I became embarrassed to be acting like a typical tourist.



At Menza, after our visit to the Lizst house, I wanted a replay of the scrumptious pumpkin soup I'd had there before but decided to try the pumpkin salad, which was pretty good, too. I wanted a shot of Jim enjoying his beer, but you can see how enthusiastic he was about that!



If I could time-travel, back to the past, I would return to the time when Angelika served as a haven for the city's artists, and I would sit here in this beautiful nook, in the golden light, and feel grateful to be alive at that very moment.