Pest-Buda, Castle Hill, Budapest, Hungary — on our Danube cruise

It was the last day of our Viking River Cruise extension in Budapest, and what a day! After our tour of the stunning Hungarian Parliament and a great traditional Hungarian meal at Tüköry, Nancy and I continued to tour the Pest side. Our first priority was a tour of the gorgeous Hungarian State Opera House. The tour

closed with lovely live opera arias performed by company members (Musetta’s Waltz and then duets from, I believe, arias by Hungarian composers). We continued to tour along Andrássy Avenue, the Champs-Elysee of Budapest, then over through the Jewish Quarter to the Dohány Street Synagogue. It’s the third largest in the world. The lines to enter deterred us from entering, and the surrounding buildings, trees, and traffic crowd the building and prevented a good photo. We continued on and wandered a good bit due to my faulty navigation. We stopped on Vaci Street for a mere ice cream cone (not a tower this time.)

We walked across the Danube on the Elizabeth Bridge, from which we could see the remarkable cave church.

Then over to the Castle Hill Funicular and up to the top. Nancy and I then dragged ourselves to our hotel, the Hilton, for a shower and a change.

We were tired after all of that walking, so just strolled a couple of blocks down from the Hilton to Pest-Buda at Fortuna Utica 3. By this time I had learned that Pest-Buda was associated with 21 Magyar Vendeglo, the place where my well-marbled pork somehow was too tough. I was wary, but I had a plan.

The first step in my plan was a recuperative Eleven O’Clock IPA, a local craft beer that turned out to be a little on the malty side, but good. Nancy ordered a Hungarian wine, a Konyari Cabernet Sauvignon, and pronounced it okay.  I had a glass later with my entree and second Nancy’s assessment.  

Nancy started with a side salad, which she enjoyed. It was fresh enough that I actually could smell the arugula. I didn’t get a photo, perhaps because I was focused on my own appetizer, the Hungarian Bistro Plate. It boasted smoked ham, Hungarian sausage, beef salami, venison sausage, pork belly, cottage cheese with paprika, and a couple of slices of Hungarian wax pepper. The platter was served with a basket of fresh hot bread, which may have been included or a separate order. I forget which.

The bread was outstanding, as bread had been throughout the trip. The dry sausage and salamis had a nice smoky flavor, and were fairly well seasoned. I enjoyed them. The eggplant puree (to the lower left of the sausages) had a wonderful smoky paprika flavor, and it was delicious smeared on the bread. Moving up and to the left, the cottage cheese with paprika was interesting, and significantly better than it sounded. The bread and a bite or two of the spicy peppers elevated it. The pork belly and ham both had a smoky tinge to go along with the rich ham flavor. Oddly the hunks of pork belly, which usually are little flavor bombs, tasted exactly like the ham. They lacked the caramelizaton that is the glory of pork belly, of swoon-inducing foods like bacon and burnt ends. What a missed opportunity!

For her entree, Nancy ordered the stuffed paprika, which came with a ball of minced pork, traditionally the pork left over after the pepper was stuffed.

Nancy, who doesn’t eat much pork, enjoyed the pork meatball, but volunteered that the sauce was very plain and badly under seasoned . It tasted like tomato soup rather than a sauce, and it undermined the dish badly.

I ordered the confit pork with paprika sauce, confident that pork cooked in fat would be tender.  The server repeated the order and assured me that it would not be spicy. I said, “I’d prefer it spicy.” “Don’t worry, it won’t be spicy.” After another round of this, the server agreed to tell the chef of my preference, and stomped off.

The dish arrived. My plan to avoid tough pork had worked like a charm. The pork was tender and rich, as confit pork can hardly help being. The accompanying mushrooms were good quality mushrooms, with real flavor of their own.  The croquettes had a leathery exterior, but the fluffy interior of each was ready to soak up a delicious sauce. I was thinking of Prague and the dumplings soaking up those fantastic sauces at Kuchyn .

Alas, the sauce was as insipid as Nancy’s had been, and that undermined my dish, too.  Perhaps we in the United States are too spoiled by the willingness of restaurants to adjust to accommodate customers’ varied tastes, even if its means little more than placing condiments on the table. I left disappointed, and feeling sorry for those poor croquettes that had been robbed of a savory destiny. I finished the bread.

You can make a fine meal at Pest-Buda, with a salad, the bread, eggplant puree, and — based on that at 21 Magyar Vendeglo — the goulash. I would avoid anything with sauce, however. You might consider the fried trout or the wiener schnitzel. Or better, consider walking a few more blocks to Baltazár Hungarian Grill, or hop in a cab and go to Tüköry or another restaurant on the Pest side.

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