Category Archives: District XIII

Early Friday Dinner at Pozsonyi Kisvendéglő

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Kisvendéglő--raw translation: littleguestwelcomer

Pozsonyi Kisvendéglő is not in a hip part of town.

Even though it’s a leisurely ten-minute walk from the Four Seasons, it’s in the direction that most tourists would not go.  They go to the river, to the Lánchíd Bridge, to the V District with trendy boutiques, overpriced drinks, and chachki-filled aisles of Hungarian classics like hanging ropes of paprika, collectible Unicum posters, tee shirts with big pictures of sausages and cold war trinkets from those hilariously memorable years of communism.  And now with Easter approaching and the armada of tourist buses roaring back into the city, there will be more and more people walking out the front door of the Four Seasons and heading in exactly the wrong direction.

Now, the real bustle is going on to the right of the Four Seasons.  Walk there, toward the distant cranes and old cotton factories and you’ll start to see the people who actually live in Budapest.  They are buying fruits and vegetables in the little shops, getting advice from the butchers, buying flowers from a street vendor, chatting with each other window to window, watering their stoops for no apparent reason.

There is so much life that happens outside of the tourist areas that I really feel compelled to urge visitors to get off of the city-bus-tour path.

And if you’re around on a Friday night, do what we, the locals do.  Last night we decided to go to Pozsonyi Étterem.  You will not hear about it in a guidebook, but it’s really a favorite of the locals.  It’s dark, smoky, and you will absolutely leave smelling like you were deep fried for about an hour.  But it’s worth it.  They serve really affordable, traditional Hungarian food and if you are shy, they speak English.

We went at five, which even for the always-full Pozsonyi was a dead time.

real wood booths

real wood booths

Unless you can make reservations, I would suggest going early.  Remember, Europeans like to eat late, (so, Dad—you never have to worry about waiting for a table.)

Czech beer and Hungarian wine

Czech beer and Hungarian wine

Since I ordered soup, the waitress brought over bread and a little bowl of Erős Pista, which is really spicy pepper spread.  People put it into their soup here, especially goulash.  It’s extremely spicy, made from dried paprikas, but if you like a little heat, it’s very delicious.

bread1

We started off with some fried mushrooms, just for a little snack while we had a drink.  We both wanted to get the ones that had the cheese inside, but there was a little Hunglish miscommunication and we ended up with the plain ones.  But they were delicious.  Plus, the waitress split the order for us and did this totally adorable plate decoration.  I mean seriously, a raw carrot, cucumber, and piece of lettuce?  How old school is that?

serious plate merchandising

serious plate merchandising

For my main course, I had Jókai bableves.  This is a bean (bab) soup (leves) in the Jókai style.  In addition to the beans and veggies it had rib meat—think Easter ham in flavor but thicker, fattier, and much much more tender.  Hungarians know their soups and this one proved it.  It was so delicious.  Smoky, beanie, dumplingie and every so often there would be a little bite of sour cream on the spoon with smoothed the tastes out even more.

ham fat is your friend

ham fat is your friend

Györgyi had Baconos csirkemell sült krumplival.  As you can tell from the picture, this was a serious serving.

chicken

There must have been two whole chicken breasts in there.  And the chicken was stewed with bacon and cream and we think butter and cheese sauce.  Seriously.  It was really amazing, I had to admit.  It was one of those meals that you take home and put in your fridge and then sometime later, when you’re a little drunk you remember it’s in your fridge and go after it like a starving bear at a fish fry.  (Not that we did that later that night after poker—I’m just saying, I’ve heard it happens).

So when you roll up in with your tour bus this spring or summer, just remember to go where the locals go.  Do not listen to the waiters in the fifth district who try to convince you to eat at their restaurant.  Walk toward the real city, the older-looking city.  Get on a bus and get off where you see people without fanny packs and guidebooks eating and drinking. You probably won’t regret it.

Seriously, if I catch you eating Sushi next to the Four Seasons, I’ll slap you.

Pozsonyi Kisvendéglő
+3617874877
Budapest, XIII. kerület, Radnóti Miklós utca 38.

Friday Night Draft

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dscn6486

By Friday morning I really like to have a plan for the weekend.  I believe this is a genetic neurosis inherited from my parents.  But it’s been a long week, getting back to the grind, and I’m about week away from finishing a fiction manuscript, so my brain needs a short rest from synapses firing in transient bursts.  So I’m using this posting to form a rough draft plan.  To be revised several times.

Even though there’s not much out, I think tonight would be a good movie night because the weather is still a little bit rainy.  The great thing about the Hungarian movie theater is that you get an assigned seat.  Now, I know some of you are thinking, how awful! And granted, especially if you’re like my Dad who seems to always attract someone sitting next to him who is giving the pre-dvd  commentary live from his seat, then you’d like be able to move around.  But, I’ve really taken to this system, especially because you can chose your seats online and reserve your tickets online, so all you have to do is get to the theater and walk to your seat.  And come on, it’s Hungary, if you think that people aren’t going to give their passionate opinions about the film while it’s rolling, then you really shouldn’t go to a movie here at all.

After the movie, perhaps we’ll go to the gem of District XIII, my favorite restaurant in Budapest so far, Pozsonyi Kisvendéglő.  It’s not fancy.  The service is neither fast nor altogether friendly.  And because their non-smoking section is, I believe, purely ironic, usually you leave smelling like someone coated you in a batter of cigarettes and then deep fried you with your clothes on.  But the food is great.  Good, Hungarian food, which is remarkably hard to find in Pest.  They have a huge menu and serve everything from goulash and matza ball soup to veal paprikas and fried liver.  And you know it’s good because it’s almost impossible to get a table there, regardless if you go at 3pm on a Tuesday or 9pm on a Saturday night.  But they take reservations.

It’s a great neighborhood for quiet nights.  The people who live here all seem to be on similar schedules.  Wake early, take the tram to work, admire Parliament from various angles, walk dog at noon, home around six, walk to dinner, drink after dinner, conversations with friends until x pm.  There aren’t any clubs in this district, like in V, nor any contenders for Miss Universe drinking champagne in soon-to-be-Michelen-rejected restaurants, (in fact we are starting to believe that the Solarium around the corner might be a front for the Russian mob).  Yet the neighborhood is a neighborhood in a non-suburb city neighborhood kind of way.  Usually for the better.

And so after movie and dinner, I think tonight would be a good night for the pub Amelie, which is cute as a button, and about as big as an American living room.  But they serve generous glasses of white wine for cheap, and there is always a ratty little white dog or two running from table to table waiting for a pet or peanut.

I’m not sure what, if any of this, will actually happen, but it’s nice to plan, and also nice to know that all of these wonderful places are just a few blocks or a few stops away.  For certain we are going to Szeged tomorrow, and we’re hoping that we can find the sun in the afternoon, and bring it back to the big city.


Morning

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dscn6133

Even though it is bitterly cold here (hopefully Russia will let us have some more gas for heating soon), the early morning is absolutely my favorite time of the day.  I wake up when it is still dark, though by the time I walk or run around the first few blocks, a little light is sneaking through the sidestreets.  Not the sun, yet, but definitely day.

dscn6131

A few minutes later, the sunlight announces itself in the windowsills.  In the 13th district, people hurry their kids to school, are walking to work, waiting for the tram, buying bread, sweeping front stoops.  Though within the beginning work of the day, it is still very peaceful, the color calming.

dscn6110

By the time I arrive home, and step out on the balcony for a cup of coffee and a quick glance at the Danube, the morning has fully arrived on the old apartment building across the street. These are thing things that make winter worth waking up for.  It’s that little something that walking you through the cold.

Györgyi thinks these buildings are ugly and is worried about what people will think about Hungary because of them.  And I understand because most people I run into in America conjure up images of Hungary as a place where people wear folk outfits to work and ride donkeys on the weekends for fun, where old alcoholic communists live in big blocks of flats and smoke cartons of cigarettes a day in the freezing, rainy, gloomy, streets.  But ugly is definitely a relative term, though I never really thought about this blog as a reperesentation of Hungary as a whole, but rather moments of a day.  And from only my experience.  I don’t really have an opinion about what’s certifiably beautiful or certifiably ugly here.  True, in some of the old buildings, the outer layer has chipped away.  In the Castle District they glue a plaque next to it, write a date on it, to show just how many layers/years have passed as a kind of proof of the lovliness of history.  In parts of the city, like in Pest, or in our 13th District, a plaque would be a little condescending, I suppose, especially for the non-tourists that live in the houses, perhaps have, for generations.  Our building was once a cotton factory, afterall, and I like to imagine what the walls looked like before they rebuilt them, put in gallery windows and a pool.

Maybe writers have an annoying quality to romanticize things that can’t or shouldn’t be made better with words, or maybe because of my experience as a kid growing up in a decidedly unattractive but likewise charming industrial city like Akron, Ohio, I have a different perspective now.  But I would be remiss not to acknowledge that the perspective is mine alone, and this city is certainly not mine to make claims on.  But I find the clean, cool, albeit old pathways charming.  The light soothing.  And I’m glad to hang my hat here awhile.