Aranysárkány Vendéglő, Szentendre

There is one place I can't skip if I am in Szentendre, in the cosy, little riverside town just 20 kms far from Budapest. And the restaurant (what else it could be..), I'm writing about is the Aranysárkány Vendéglő (Golden Dragon), in the Alkotmány utca. It was founded by Attila Máhr in 1977 and now his son is the chef who is creating the familiar mood of the restaurant beside of the pleasant dishes.

Favourite: Dragon's Bouillon with marrow medallion on toast

Toast, garlic, horseradish and the marrow medallion, as it has to be

Medallon of port "Good Housewife" style

It's a perfect place for a lunch on a daily trip out from Budapest. Besides the wonderful atmosphere of Szentendre, soon you can taste the typical Hungarian Christmas dishes, like the Fish soup and the stuffed cabbage, that are cooked wonderful based on my past experiences from last years.

Moreover, I hope this year also it will be possible to order them. To be honest, it's not that bad to be lazy one day during the holidays when you only have to warm up the stuffed cabbage and enjoy it with the family. :)

Café Panini

If I had to choose which is my favorite neighborhood in Budapest, I would say it's Újlipótváros. It's a calm, little treasure in the 13th district. A typical neighborhood where you can find everything you need without going to a big supermarket. Also, luckily, it's just a superb place for having breakfast on a Sunday morning. If you just decide to get into exploring the streets of it, and look for a nice café, one of the first you will find near to the Danube is the Café Panini. It's a lively coffee shop with a lot of energy. For breakfast you can choose between cold and warm dishes as well. 

French toast stuffed with ham and cheese, served with sour cream and salad

Croissant with ham and cheese

On weekdays apart from breakfasts, drinks and cakes, they are offering lunch menus as well for 1790 Ft.

And after a nice breakfast at Café Panini, you can enjoy a refreshing walk on the Margaret Island or in the neighborhood for discovering some treasures of Budapest.

Két Szerecsen

If you are looking for a nice and cozy restaurant for a cold autumn day, the Két Szerecsen can be a perfect choice. In TripAdvisor's Travelers Choice of 2015 the Két Szerecsen was selected among the first 10 restaurants in Budapest. After the delicious dinner I had, I have to admit I agree with everyone who has voted on this restaurant.

In the interior and in the style of Két Szerecsen, you can find some characteristics of the French Bistros. The menu is more diverse than that: there are Hungarian, French, Moroccan, Italian and Thai dishes as well. What they all have in common are the high-quality ingredients and the traditional tastes with the touch of modern gastronomy.

Is it a familiar feeling for you when you are looking at a menu, and you are sure that anything you will order, it will be perfect? I love it! At Két Szerecsen it happened like this just because of the menu, the interior, the atmosphere and of the things I read about it. As the result of this feeling we tried the following dishes (all of them are perfectly composed and delicious):

Prawns in white wine sauce

Spinach soup with crispy bacon and poached egg

Moroccan lamb shoulder, couscous with eggplant and mint, honeyed onion and yoghurt

Mangalitsa shoulder with vegetables

Unfortunately I haven't visited all the the 10 restaurants from TripAdvisor's Travelers Choice list, so for now I can "only" say that the Két Szerecsen is one of the best restaurants of Budapest where I have been. The wonderful dishes, the atmosphere and the service will bring me back.

Akademia Italia Budapest

It's a restaurant, it's a breakfast place, it's a shop, it's a cooking school and it's Italian. The Academia Italia was opened right next to the St. Stephen's Basilica.The first thing which will probably make you enter and see what else it has in store for you, is the interior of the restaurant.  Every little detail is perfect and designed with the utmost care by an Italian designer, from Turin. Of course, not only the design, but all the furniture came also from Italy.

On the menu you can't find any main course but you can choose between soups, salads, pastas, pizzas, risottos and desserts. It's a culinary paradise where you can come at any time and for sure you will find something ideal. And of course, all the ingredients are coming from Italy, included such a basic but essential products as the flour and sugar.

Breakfast at Akademia Italia:

Cornetto with vanilla cream

Omelette for breakfast

Dinner at Akademia Italia:

Octopus carpaccio with olives and celery

Pizza with speck ham and fontina cheese

Gnocchetto with Charlotte onion, tomato and Parma ham

Coppa golosa: Cream dessert with sponge cake, mascarpone cream and hot chocolate sauce

And if you would like to bring home some Italian delicacies, just go to the basement of the restaurant where you can buy products which are coming directly from Italy.

The cooking classes will be held here

As the atmosphere of the restaurant is so appealing, I am looking forward to go back for visiting a cooking class, for buying some Italian wine or for having a great dinner there. 

Trattoria Gusto - Felicitá on the Liszt Ferenc Square

I love Italy, the Italian food, the Italian wine, the Italian beaches and the Italian atmosphere. If it was possible I would go every week to this spectacular country for a dinner. But unfortunately, it has to stay as a lovely dream. Apart from this sad reality, luckily there are good news also: if you go to the Trattoria Gusto on the Liszt Ferenc Square you can find yourself in at Italian atmosphere with some fabulous Italian food. It can be considered also as an advantage of this trattoria, that you can communicate in English and for sure the waiters will understand you.

Regarding the wine, we trusted the opinion of the waiter, so the pasta and the pizza were accompanied by a glass of Casteltorre Chardonnay from Veneto region. What I like the most with the wines is that feeling, when you try it for the first time and you are thinking it's great. Afterwards it's perfectly matching with the food you ordered, and then you know that the food itself is making it even better. Now it happened exactly on that way.

For the main course my choice felt on the Thyme tagliatelle with flap mushrooms and garlic prawns. One of the best pasta I have ever tried! With the thyme and the mushroom it's a splendid dish for a rainy, cold autumn day of Budapest. 

From a menu of an Italian trattoria usually the pizzas are not left out. Neither in the Trattoria Gusto! The pizza Salsicca e porcini trifolati contains tomato sauce, loin sausage and garlic flap mushrooms. The loin sausage with the mushroom gave an extraordinary taste to this thin, oven-baked pizza.

Dessert: Tiramisu and Home made profiteroles. About the tiramisu there is nothing to criticize: creamy, well-balanced, not too sweet, ideal dessert. Regarding the profiteroles: the chocolate sauce was really tasteful but I would have liked it more and it would have made better combination, if instead of the filling of the whipped cream, it had have a more elegant pastry cream inside. 

In summery, the Trattoria Gusto is an Italian restaurant which stands out with its high quality from the many other which you can find in Budapest. I will definitely return and try some other dishes from the menu, even if it will be really difficult not to order again the thyme tagliatelle with flap mushrooms and prawns. 

Amber's French Bakery & Cafe

My ideal Saturday seem like this: sleeping until late, having a late breakfast in a cozy cafe, going to a market for fresh meat and vegetables and cooking the marvelous lunch I was thinking of during the week. Not every Saturday happens this way, but luckily the last one was exactly as I wanted. And I definitely can't complain: the Amber's French Bakery ensured the good start of the day.

The location is perfect, it's just in front of the Great Market Hall, on the Fővám tér. You can choose between croissants, pastries, sandwiches, tarts and of course from eclairs which can't be missing from a French cafe.

We would have liked to try the croissant with almond or the puff pastry with pistachios but unfortunately at 11 o'clock they already ran out from it. Looks like it's worth it to wake up earlier and try one of those! ;)

But we were not disappointed neither with the croissant with ham and the baguette with sour cream, ham and cabbage. They were tasty, warm and freshly prepared. The combination of the cabbage and sour cream was surprisingly very delicious. 

Warm croissant with ham

Warm baguette with sour cream, cabbage and ham

A Saturday breakfast can't be finished here, so it was followed by a chocolate eclair and a brioche with chocolate. The eclair fulfilled all my need for chocolate for that day with it creamy and light texture.

For home we bought also a baguette for 420 Ft which was definitely worth to buy it. The only thing I regretted is that we bought only one for the weekend.

The Amber's French Bakery & Cafe is a perfect place for a breakfast with affordable prices. So far the only things needs to be improved is the service. The stuff is nice and helpful, and they speak great English too but they chose to have the self-service system which is still a little chaotic and slow. They opened only this summer, so I hope they will improve it and I can go back and try the croissant with almond also.

A sweet jaunt to Vác: Mihályi Pastry Shop

There is a little city, called Vác, located in the heart of the Danube bend 30 kms to the north from Budapest. This baroque-style town deserves an article on my gastro blog, not only because it's my hometown but because of its wonderful pastry shop. 

Mihályi László, well-known pastry chef, opened his shop in Vác, in 2008 after working in such an illustrious hotels as Four Seasons and Sofitel. In the cakes of Mihályi you can find everything what makes them unforgettable: modernism, new shapes, individual style, high quality and surprises. This doesn't mean that he rejects the traditions. On the contrary; he creates such a well-balanced cakes, that they will make you return and order other ones from his assortment.

Rákóczi túrós

Vác desszert

You can't go wrong with choosing your cake. They look wonderful and they taste wonderful! Even though, the prices of the desserts can be higher than in most of the pastry shops of Budapest. But if you feel that you need to pamper your taste buds a little bit, get on the train or on the bike and make a little trip to Vác. After having a cake on the main square, don't miss the sunset from the Danube promenade!