Simple eating fare in Budapest + water travel + a little nostalgia

Food in Budapest is cheap and good.  You can have a slap up meal in the vast number of restaurants and not come out with a very light feeling wallet.  But you can also have very good simple food at a fraction of cost.  The national dish of langos may not sound very appetising - fried dough with toppings.  But it is a nationally popular and filling meal.

This one has cheese and salami added as toppings.  There are various langos outlets including upstairs in the food markets, 3 around the city.

Pancake.

Above is the retes (strudel) shop at the big market downstairs.  One can satisfy one's longing for a retes of any flavour, in my case, a cabbage strudel.  Not something my Anglo Saxon friends view with understanding at all.  For them a strudel is always sweet.  Well, they can have apple, cherry, cottage cheese or some others too.  For me, a cabbage strudel is what I come for.  Mind you, I do not have a great love for another Hungarian favourite in summer, cold fruit soups with sour cream.  They serve it proudly before a meal while we would prefer is as a dessert, if at all.

We found IKEA in Budapest and it is the same labyrinthine layout as elsewhere in the world.  But here they had a herring stand at the restaurant which was very very reasonably priced and full of good tasty Hungarian food, including one of my favourites, bean soup.

The anti-pasto goes by weight and there are four different types of herrings plus other anti pasto type of food. 

Above is something called tocsni.  This is grated potato, onion, flour and egg.  Made into a large cake shape and then cut up and fried.  Delicious, served with garlic flavoured sour cream.

And finally my piece de resistance, roast goose breast that I have perfected here in Budapest.  I first tasted it at Spinozahaz and I have been practising cooking it along with duck legs and breasts.  All remarkably cheap here at the market and at home in Australia such an expensive delicacy.  Doesn't it look scrumptious?

We also discovered that our transport card also included, during the weekdays only, the ability to travel on the Danube ferries.  We did it yesterday and travelled out to Romaifurdo which is sort of holiday place where people go for outings and weekends.  People hire canoes and paddle around the Danube.  It was a lovely ride.

The Danube is a busy thoroughfare.  There are many cruisers from other countries taking tourists for cruises up and down the Danube plus ferries and pleasure boats.  This is taken on our ferry which as I said was covered by our transport pass.

This scene too was on a boat but this was a day long bridge competition held on a stationery boat/restaurant on the Danube, organised to celebrate a bridge player's birthday.  Two movements and a 3 course lunch.  It was a lovely day.  We came a creditable 6th out of some 52 pairs.

This building is a very nostalgic one for me.  My wonderful aunt Lili lived there with her family and I visited there often.  It is on the corner of Petofi Sandor utca and Ferenciek Ter.

This is the foyer of the Parisi undvar, the inside foyer of the building.  Below is one of the ceilings of this wonderful building.  Downstairs, the foyer used to be lined with elegant shops and the tenants lived upstairs in the tenement part.  

The beauty of the building even today is astonishing.  It is the equal of the Strand Arcade and also the Queen Victoria buildings in Sydney.  Yet this splendid, imposing building, here in Budapest, is condemned.  It has been sadly neglected and is all crumbling inside. All tenants have moved out about 2 years ago.   I was so sad that I would not go and visit the third floor where their apartment used to be.  I did visit about 15 years ago but not since then.  Now you can only access it from the Ferenciek Ter side, the other entrance is barred and locked.  Such a sad waste.