Oh, hot summer days! Oh, endless summer nights! I wish they’d last forever. Outdoors, that’s where you should be now, in the shades or under the orange-black city skies. In a garden of the “Kazinczy street pub axis”: Kőleves Kert. A fine example for utilizing an empty, deserted site other than turning it into a parking lot.

Kőleves, the “mother ship” is a good place to have a lunch or dinner, and the garden also offers a row of great dishes from noon till late in the night. In this time of the year I definitely prefer eating outdoors.

The place looks really cheerful with colorful tables and chairs, swings instead of bar chairs and other odd accessories. There are small stones spread all over the garden which makes simple walking quite a challenge, especially after a few drinks, so be prepared to leave the bar with enough supplies!

Click here for more photos.

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Kőleves Kert | Bars, Coffee & tea, Snacks | Large Soproni beer HUF 480
Kazinczy u. 37 | Central Pest | +3613221011
Sun – Thu 12:00 – 02:00, Fri – Sat 12:00 – 03:00 (closed in case of bad weather)

Handmade quality chocolate, all forms and tastes that a real connoisseur can dream of. Pralines and table chocolates are just the top of the iceberg. Personally I am a big fan of (dark) chocolates, I don’t even want to hide my enthusiasm.

The shop is really small where the design and the lights create a calm atmosphere that accentuates the bitter-clean smell of chocolate and cocoa beans. I’m still in the phase of tasting various pralines, if course I can recommend all of the flavors but I wouldn’t miss the lemon-oil caramel bonbon and the chanterelle praline at no cost. The sweets are wrapped in stylish wrappers or put in design-boxes.

Chocolate can also be used as raw material to create artworks: chocolate sculptures, boxes or “rusty tools” show the skills of the craftsmen and -women. Eating these beautiful pieces of art would be blasphemy! Well, hard times sometimes bring the heretic out of the chocolate believer.

The street where the shop is located has been undergoing a major transformation for some time and it has turned into a nice pedestrian street, just like the surrounding area. You’ve got to watch out not to walk past the shop, look for the chocolate brown shop front.

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Rózsavölgyi Chocolate | Shopping, Snacks | 10 Bonbons HUF 2760
Királyi Pál utca 6 | Central Pest | +36308148929
Mon – Fri 10:30 – 13:00 & 13:30 – 18:30, Sat 12:00 – 18:00

Gang is a German loanword in Hungarian meaning the open corridor that can be found in most of the houses in downtown Budapest. The typical „gang house” was built from the second half of the 19th century to the 1920s-30s and originally served as an apartment building with big flats.

Communist times turned the few big apartments into several smaller ones sometimes resulting in flats without toilets. So people had to visit the common toilet at the end of the corridor. These times are (almost) over, what’s left are the flats with their entrance door opening to the inner courtyards.

Some communities care more about these interesting yards, they have removed the clinkers to reveal the soil and plant flowers, lay it down with grass, even create a little kitchen-garden for the residents. But even if the tenants neglect the state of the premises, there is a type of tree that grows tall even in the crack of the wall and could be the symbol of urban survival: sumac.

Walk around in downtown, even further to the outskirts and carefully walk in if you see an open door. I promise, you’ll find real gems inside.

Photos

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Inner courtyards | Art & culture, Relaxing | Free
Central Pest | Central Pest
24 hours daily

Arriba is a recently opened Mexican fast food restaurant which has rapidly become popular, especially with the yuppie crowd (as far as I observed) and American expats craving for their Tex-Mex fix. The food is very nice – maybe not up to what you’d get in Mexico or some parts of the U.S. (I wouldn’t really know), but certainly the best I or my American friends have ever had in Budapest.

The place operates on the same “pick your own components” system as, say, Subway: you choose the base for you taco or burrito, the type of meat, and hand pick from a selection of various sauces, spices and veggies. The food is accompanied by a very nice selection of drinks, including Horchata (rice milk with cinnamon), Margarita, and various Mexican beers you can only get in maybe two or three places in Budapest.

While Taquerias are traditionally takeaways, Arriba also has plenty of seating on two levels. It’s a delightful place to sit down for you meal, with warm, colourful tables and adorable „faux kitsch” murals that really add to the upbeat vibe. Just be aware that the place can get quite crowded, and you might have no option but to take away your order and eat it elsewhere. Personally, I’ve had good luck so far late in the evening and just after lunchtime.

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Arriba Taqueria | Restaurants (Mexican) | Burrito HUF 1100
VI. Teréz körút 25 | Central Pest | +3613740057
Sun – Thu 11:00 – 00:00, Fri – Sat 11:00 – 02:00

Centrál is a very elegant, old style coffee house and restaurant, a bit on the expensive side, but worth a look if you want to know what Pest was like a hundred years ago.

Thanks to Hungary’s proximity and, let’s say, historical contact with Turkey, coffee culture has always been big around here, but probably never so much so as in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Coffee houses were meeting points of the intellectual elite and the regular haunts of artists and journalists, some of who actually lived in coffee houses. Centrál Kávéház already existed back then, and even though it fulfilled other functions during the communist era, the new management is reaching back to the golden age for inspiration, and as far as looks go, they’re doing a good job.

The place looks exactly as it must have looked back then, and the selection of freely readable newspapers by the entrance is also a fitting touch.

The place is divided into a restaurant area, and a coffee house which is more appropriate for sitting down for a bit of a rest while sipping some tea or coffee. As for the food, it’s always been good when I tried it, but a bit pricey. However, if you want to sit down somewhere in the middle of the day to chat and look at passersby, Centrál has the perfect ambience for that – and a few teas or coffees won’t break the bank.

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Centrál Kávéház | Coffee & tea, Restaurants (European) | Main from HUF 1300
Károlyi Mihály utca 9 | Central Pest | +3612662110
07:00 – 00:00 daily

“Corvin roof” is a club and bar with an open-air area inside and atop Corvin Department Store, an ugly, grey, communist-era building at Blaha Lujza metro station.

Finding the place is a bit tricky, which lends it a sort of “hidden treasure” charm: you have to walk into a side street and look for a cargo elevator at the end of a short passageway, inside a fast food buffet with the sign “Corvin Kifozde”. You can’t call the elevator – it keeps going up and down every few minutes (or you can take the stairs to the top floor, but that’s much less fun). As a very friendly touch, really thirsty or impatient partygoers can buy some drinks from the friendly elevator attendant’s icebox.

In the club you can buy drinks, sit down at a table for a chat, or take to the dance floor. However, if you’re there during the summer and want to see what’s really cool about Corvinteto, you should look for stairs leading up to the building’s spacious rooftop with its own bar, plenty of seating, and much easier conversation without the loud music that plays sometimes. On a warm evening you can really chill out and chat away with a cool urban backdrop surrounding you – and if you get restless, the dance floor is right below.

Do note that the rooftop closes for the winter; no exact closing or opening date, it depends on the weather.

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Corvinteto | Bars, Music | Beer HUF 500
Blaha Lujza tér 1-2 | Central Pest | +36207722984
Mon – Sat 18:00 – 05:00

Csiga is a friendly, cozy café and restaurant with really nice cuisine, rather popular with local expats. A very nice place; not too big, but it always has a relaxed, laid-back atmosphere, and is a good place to visit with a not-too-large group of friends.

I can’t say I’ve tried everything on the menu, but what I’ve tasted so far has always been fine. If you’re going to stay in Budapest for a while, it’s worth checking back, as part of the menu – the one on the blackboard on the wall – sometimes changes.

They also have wi-fi, if you need it.

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Café Csiga | Bars, Restaurants (Various) | Main dishes HUF 1800
Vásár utca 2 | Central Pest | +3612100885
11:00 – 01:00 daily

Kuplung is an indoors equivalent of the beergardens that became so popular in the last decade, and is an excellent place to go if you want to see the boho grungy side of Pest but it happens to be winter. The street entrance is a bit hard to spot – make sure you know the house number! -, but it’s worth the search.

Like many other venues of this style, Kuplung was once a run-down building – an auto repair shop, hence the name meaning “clutch” – that was fixed up, the walls graffitied in cheerful colours, some durable tables and chairs dropped in, and some clever decor added, this one dominated by a large paper whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling.

The main room, even though some other venues might beat it in total floor area, feels comfortably spacious, so you and your party can have some elbow space even when the place is full. There’s also a smaller room where they sometimes have concerts, and a third, more recently opened bar room with a generous size, but I just haven’t got around to drinking in that one yet, so opinion will be forthcoming later.

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Kuplung | Bars, Music | Beers from HUF 500
Király utca 46 | Central Pest
Mon – Sat from 14:00, Sun from 18:00

As the name suggests perfectly, Noir is a chocolate bar. While Hungary is not a chocolate world power like, say, Belgium, Noir certainly does its part in meeting the needs of local chocophiles. It’s got all sorts of chocolates, including hot drinking chocolate, hot drinking chocolate with various spices from chili to cardamom, hot chocolate with or without alchohol, or hot chocolate with or without spices and/or alcohol on ice.

What more need I say? If you have the craving for sweet, sweet (or dark andbitter) chocolate, this is the place to go. Do reserve a table if you’re planning to visit in the evening, it gets crowded around that time.

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Noir ChocoBar | Bars, Snacks | Hot chocolate from HUF 700
Hegedu utca 6 | Central Pest | +36202228555
Sun – Mon 15:00 – 22:00, Tue – Sat 15:00 – 00:00

Szimpla is hands-down the best known and most popular of Budapest’s “kert”-s(“gardens”) – courtyards of condemned or just abandoned buildings transformed into outdoor summer pubs, originally catering mostly for a young, bohemian clientele. As such, it has all the typical accroutements: crumbling architecture, plain but sturdy benches and tables, beer, totally kooky decor, lots of noise, beer, heavily stickered and graffitied toilets, and beer.

While there are many establishments that follow the same recipe, Szimpla is unique for having its own open-air movie theater, where they often play art movies, sparsely screened documentaries and the like. In recent years, they’ve also covered part of the venue with a roof to let them stay open all year round, and expanded into the upper floor, where you can also get some hot grub with your drinks.

Recently, I’ve heard some friends complain that Szimpla is getting too popular and thus too mainstream these days. Well, maybe that’s true – sometimes the crowd and the noise does get a bit too much for my tastes -, but it’s still more than worth checking out if you’re in town. Loud, friendly, visually lush and exciting; a great place to go when the company you desire is more upbeat than sublime.

Also, it’s one of the very few places in town where you can get cider. Pretty expensive – low-quantity import is bound to be pricey -, but there you have it: if you really, really want the stuff, you can get it here.

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Szimpla Kert | Bars, Restaurants (Various) | Beers HUF 500
Kazinczy utca 14 | Central Pest
12:00 – 04:00 daily