Budapest's food scene splits between two banks of the Danube that still carry distinct characters. Pest — the flat eastern side with the Parliament, the Jewish Quarter, and the main shopping streets — is where the city's restaurant culture has developed most intensively. The 7th district (Erzsébetváros) is the Jewish Quarter and the city's most animated neighborhood: the Great Market Hall (Nagyvásárcsarnok) at the head of Váci Utca sells paprika, salami, and pickled vegetables from market stalls that have barely changed their inventory in a century, while the ruin bars and new restaurants of the surrounding streets serve everything from Hungarian classics to contemporary creative cooking.
The Jewish Quarter's ruin bar scene — centered on Kazinczy Utca and Dob Utca — began with Szimpla Kert and has expanded into a neighborhood of courtyards, gardens, and converted apartments that operate as restaurants, wine bars, and cultural venues. The food quality in these spaces has improved enormously: Mazel Tov (a Bauhaus building converted into a Levantine restaurant with a courtyard of fairy lights) is legitimately excellent. Olimpia, a tiny natural wine bar on Alpári Gyula Utca, has a kitchen producing sophisticated small plates that would not look out of place in Copenhagen.
Buda — the hilly western bank with the Castle District and the Gellért Hill — is more residential and traditional. The Castle District's restaurant scene caters somewhat to tourism, but the neighborhoods around Krisztinaváros and the Bartók Béla Úton strip in the 11th district have excellent neighborhood restaurants that serve the Hungarian bourgeoisie. The Fény Utca market near Mammut shopping center is Buda's best neighborhood food market.
Hungarian cuisine is built around paprika (sweet and hot), slow-braised meats, freshwater fish (fogash, a Balaton pike-perch, is the national fish), and exceptional dairy — the country's sour cream (tejföl), curd cheese (túró), and butter are among Europe's finest. The Mangalica pig — a Hungarian breed with uniquely marbled fat that fell into near-extinction before being revived — now appears on menus across the city in braised, cured, and grilled preparations.
Tokaji Aszú, Hungary's legendary botrytized dessert wine, is one of Europe's great wine treasures and is poured at Budapest's better wine bars (Doblo Wine & Bar in the Jewish Quarter, Kadarka Bar on Kertész Utca) in ways that international visitors are rarely prepared for. The Great Hungarian Plain's Bull's Blood (Egri Bikavér) and the Villány region's Cabernet-based reds are the country's other wine strengths, both consistently underpriced compared to Western European equivalents.
