Restaurateur
Saveliy Libkin

About restaurants of Budapest.

So, I chose 6 restaurant out of all variety recommended by Mishelin, Zagat, Rusian internet, concierges of hotels, taxi drivers and friends. The radical mistake was made with two restaurants: Onyx with Mishelin star and Renascence in small town Visegrád near Budapest.  The mistake with Onyx was predictable because my intuition prompted me that I won’t be able to eat there and I came there rather because of curiosity. What do they mean under “the best” restaurant in Budapest? Trip Advisor, Michelin and Zagat call Onyx one of two the best restaurants of Hungary. I don’t quite understand what kinds of criteria are guided by people who praise this restaurant… I estimated general atmosphere, is it possible to eat deliciously and amicability of service. Already at first sight at Onyx empty dining area and tall models waiters of the same height daunted me. The process of apéritif offering was nice but rather affected. The order was brought on the added table with castors which was covered by big and small bottles. I also liked small warm buns. The appetizer and main course allowed to pick by pincers in the plate but no more. There wasn’t any gastronomy in these false cubes. The food looked like silicone and the taste was the same.

At Renascence everything was much merrier. The huge restaurant (about 500 seats) in the village, meant for welcome of tourist groups from another villages (post-Soviet out-of-the-way place) solely. Here they have everything for this: personnel can drum meeting the buses, the cloakroom is hanged tightly with costumes of servants and aristocracy of “Renascence” epoch, a lot of paper crowns on the tables. Additionally there are also two mini thrones with two copper crowns in the dining area. You must admit that in this situation they can don’t feed people. Crowds of tourists come there, put on the costumes, take there seats and have their pictures taken. The food for tourists is cooked beforehand, probably a few times in a month for all planned groups.

I came over and above the plan but I ordered dishes from the menu, so « assembly» of food took only a short time.

Below you can find the photo of the dish.

Café 21 made very good impression on me. English-speaking personnel, the menu in English, clear names and complete correspondence between what is on the plate and what is written in the menu. In addition, cozy warm colors and full restaurant of non tourists up to 35 years old. Not a hint of gourmandize but the food is delicious.
Photos of the dishes from 21

Definetly the best restaurant to my mind is Bock Bistro. The atmosphere is excellent. The chef and the manager are in the dining area constantly and seat the guests. The menu is not long and understandable. The food is cooked technologically correctly. Professional hospitality and huge practical experience is felt in every thing. It is noticeable that all the team works in this composition no less then 5 years. Everyone is quick on the uptake of everything and everybody. Everything is very delicious and exactly this thing makes this restaurant standard fully busy all the days. You can’t get there without booking. There are no available tables for dinner at all.
Below you can find photos of the dishes and the chef.

Alabardos is typically evening restaurant. The chef Attila Bicsar according to his own confession dreams about Michelin star and this fact has a slight impact on the way of writing the3 names in the menu and some complexity of the dishes. Nevertheless the food is delicious and looks freshly cooked. The guitarist and melodies of the Beatles, Celine Dion, Animals and Ennio Morricone mixed up with ethnic tunes are in the dining area. At this there are a lot of axes, arbalests and other weapon in the interior. The local Furmint (local wine) also added romanticism to the atmosphere.

Below you can find photos of the dishes and the chef.

On the photo the chef is on the right

Pesti Diszno. A youth gastropub without cuisine and with warmed-up food in the very downtown of Budapest. Nevertheless the atmosphere is very good. It is better to go there full or at least you can feed up there a little bit drunk girls. The spirits are in the priority at this restaurant, because you won’t be able to have a good meal there.

And nevertheless the impression is positive because of logo and corporate identity of half bar – half café under the name Pig from Buda.
Below you can find photos of the dishes and interior.

About naphthalene café Gerbeaud you can read in the interne, and it is preferably to visit it after pension, but only if your savings will be enough… Boring-pompous-historical-expensively-chocolate. Very good packing plus papers, wrappers and labels with gilding. Everything is stand on this.
Below you can find photos of interior with papers.

The marks in the result look like this

Bock Bistro 5

21 and Alabardos 4

Pesti Diszno 3+

Onyx and Renascence firm 2

Gerbeaud get stuck between 3+ and 2.

Tags: Будапешт, Gastro-tourism, Restaurants

Thinking aloud about Italian restaurants

Good Italian restaurant in Prague is…

• Chef with notions.
• A half of personnel are Ukrainians.
• Slicer Berkel at a price $10 000 with prosciutto San Daniele in the dining area surely, plus 30-40 options of grappa and fresh mozzarella di Bufala and Sicilian tomatoes.
• 5-7 options of the freshest Mediterranean fish.
• Short Italian menu.
• Balsamic and olive oil of decent quality.
• Decent interior, without «Celentano» in the frames, empty wine bottles as a décor, junk is present but a little.
• Check makes 30-70 Euros without wine

Good Italian restaurant in London is…

• Books about the chef at the most noticeable place of the dining area.
• The handsome chef in person in the dining area.
• A half of personnel in the kitchen are black-skinned.
• The personnel of the dining area are with notions and know about food.
• You can purchase some products to take away
• Short menu always.
• Very delicious and more often more delicious then in Italy.
• The interior is functional, restrained and performed by noted architect.
• Wine in bottles is present in the interior.
• Check makes from 50 up to 70 pounds without wine.

Good Italian restaurant in Italy (Milan, Rome or Florence isn’t considered) is…

• All the personnel of kitchen are black-skinned.
• The chef is from Montenegro or Croatia.
• 3-4 options of grappa and enough options of another aperitif.
• 15-20 options of very delicious antpasti on the big table in the dining area.
• Age of the waiters is far more then 50.
• Big portions.
• Borscht and solyanka are absent.
• Very delicious olive oil without labels.
• Interior doesn’t pay attention to itself and looks like nobody worked on it.
• Torn couch and family portrait in the dining area.
• Check makes up to 30 Euros

Italian restaurants in Dnepropetrovsk are …

• 15 cooks graduated from culinary school in Tiraspol at 15 square meters.
• No one including the chef understands what good Italian food is.
• Everything beginning from solyanka and borscht up to steaks and beef Stroganoff is present in the menu.
• Pizza and pasta are made from Ukrainian flour and Ukrainian sense.
• Mozzarella of local style also.
• Plastic onion and garlic are hanged everywhere in the dining area.
• Everything is checked.
• Huge quantity of different junk and empty bottles of olive-green color is placed on the shelves.
• A lot of firewood.
• Interior was made by Sikorskiy.
• Palm and other gilding can be met, but these are moves of another expert.
• Check makes from 90 up to 200 hryvnas

Good Italian restaurant in Moscow is…

• v. like in London but without chef and books in the dining area, and check makes about $160

Italian restaurant in Odessa is…

• The chef read Visotskaya at best.
• Personnel can say hello in Italian.
• The matters with cooks are going better then in Dnepropetrovsk.
• Solyanka is almost absent in the menu.
• Flour and other products is Ukrainian.
• Cooks can’t make pasta but they try.
• Under the name fresh fish is salmon in the menu.
• Balsamic by Knorr or similar.
• Everything is checked also.
• All shelves are filled up with junk, empty bottles and flowerpots with wooden trash.
• Plastic onion and decorations from colored noodles are present in the interiors.
• A lot of firewood.
• The hand of the same expert like in Dnepropetrovsk is noticed.
• Wood-fired oven in the dining area and «Celentano» in the frames.
• Check makes from 70 up to 160 hryvnas.

I’ll repeat myself: the character is generalized and doesn’t pretend to 100% precision or polyhistory. The exceptions are exists surely. I wrote this in rainy weather and after meeting with officials.

Tags: Gastro-tourism, путешествия, Restaurants

The first dinner was at «Taron». We were received hospitably by Vado the owner and the manager of this restaurant at the same time. Everything was delicious and simple. Then we had a tea and dessert at rather busy café «Centaur» in the downtown. One can reason for a long time why coffee house is named «Centaur» but there are a lot of guests there, the service is pleasant and in general everything is o.k.

The very acquaintance with food service began the next day at the hotel during the breakfast. About these things I usually tell the following: the restaurant is on technical level. The pictures and other attributes are in their place. The staff smiles.  The frankfurters are hardly warm. The croissants are from Polish packet with endless best-before date resemble rather dried up tadpoles. The processed cheese and also mayonnaise, mustard and ketchup are in assortment. The hotel is new, the staff of the lobby is friendly and well-wishing and this compensates “the breakfast” with usury.

Then we had a lunch at pizzeria which is considered to be a delicious one in Lvov. Some people have an opinion that the products for this pizzeria are delivered from Italy. Pizza and calzone cooked in the wood burning oven seemed to be prepared normally enough, but the products were local including rubber mozzarella and tomatoes. The atmosphere at the table was excellent thanks to communication with Vado and artist Vladimir Kostirko.

I have chosen the second restaurant of Veronica with high-sounding name«Аmadeus» for dinner but Vado recommended their newest project «Black cat». Decorated in the style of «rich restaurant» with the help of English pub’s paraphernalia and huge budget for fabrics, copper and other foreign beer accoutrements «Black cat» seemed to be bad-looking from the facade but as we came their already we decided to come in. The menu is huge and it includes everything you want beginning from sushi and up to foie gras and dumplings. The dining room is empty. The service is provincial in Ukrainian style with famous and ubiquitous phrase «what do you like?» and then a list of section of the menu…

We had tea and dessert at busy «Centaur» again. The next day we decided to find the restaurant for lunch by ourselves without asking Vado but just inspecting menus and atmosphere of the restaurant in the downtown. After inspection of several empty semi restaurants we came across the hotel «Leopolis» where we left the car. It should be said that we also tried to have a lunch at «Kraivka» about which we have heard in Odessa but outright rudeness of primitive jerk guard and criticism of Odessa from his lips done their part.

This time empty dinning room and pompous waiter at the «Leopolis» didn’t force us to leave at once as we were tired of walking. The food is expensive but it can be applied to the prices in the menu only. That things on the plate looked hardly 20% of its cost in the menu. In short we began to eat and it was late to leave. Everyone at the table made a wry faces. After my Caesar salad from Chinese cabbage I was occupied with searching a way to leave a feedback for the staff. That is what I got in the result.

Maybe it looks somewhat rude according to the form… but on the other hand it is very right according to essence.

The last dinner at «Тaron» again was with greatly cooked pilaf. The general impression is the following: everything is o.k. with pictures, old furniture and décor in the majority of the restaurants… They don’t pay any attention to food in principle. It seems that in the majority of the restaurants the waiters work as a cooks when they don’t busy with making the furniture old. And the tourists like very much these aged things in Lvov.

Tags: Львов, Restaurants

Tags: Львов, Restaurants

Continuation.

You can read the beginning last Saturday:

Part 1

In 2003 city authorities have «allowed» to the townsmen to spend money on renewal of paving slab and respectively to use new surfacing for summer café. Plastic furniture has been sold at the seven km market like pastries with peas. One had to hire persons with higher education as waiters. At that time Elena Ivanovna has managed entrusted to her restaurant after her previous work at district committee with newspaper in her hands. A cup of coffee and a newspaper in general were as scepter and globe for her. She didn’t part with them even in the lavatory. Alena, who was a waitress at that time, after she has graduated language and literature department and language and literature department called her delicate enough old bitch. Elena Ivanovna has hold out two weeks. Then Alena made friends with one of the summer guests and in one month she gone to Denmrk with him to have a trial marriage trip. She is still there. Of course she has changed that man who helped her to come and see foreign country to another boyfriends but she still recollects her home only by Internet. Many girls have followed her successful example. To be more precise everyone has tried to do it and in summer the service became front-oriented. Even if the body didn’t allow much to flirt then a few bottles of wine, at that time it was imported from Georgia have done their part. To cut it short, just Alena has left the country but the staff liked the foreigners for a long time. 65 years old Frenchman Andre who became Andrusha at the instigation of his local brides have come to the restaurant every day  and have treated them every day and told them about how nice it is there at his home land. How he mixes beer with blackcurrant liqueur and how he eats year-round strawberry after champagne there. How near his native Alsace is to other different foreign names. But it was end in talk and in autumn Andre gone home alone. His brides with waitress have recollected for a long time his stories about casino in Baden-Baden and his cheap tip. From that time one of the brides liked corner table and she spent not one Saturday night sitting there with a cup of tea and foreign newspapers. But only local drunken man or guest workers from Moldova who introduced themselves as businessmen from Kishinev have show their interest. Once one of such businessmen have tried to pay for his bill with the help of discount card of the restaurant having assured the administrator Masha that the director of the restaurant gave him this card. In spite of that Masha also came from Transdniestria she has distinguished one card from another easily enough and if the guest didn’t has a discount then she often used her own card with hope for big tip. Masha was puzzled out only because of a guest’s avarice. Vladimir Naumovich bragged at another shift that Masha calculates his bills with discount… At that he bragged to his lady-love who did not fail to tell about it to the then director when they arranged small stand-up party.

Masha wasn’t fired but she was warned. With time discounts gained epidemic nature. The staff has been growing fat, the profitability has been falling. On the other hand at that time CO* didn’t look fixedly on the restaurants and they were busy with fundamental transactions-issues-projects. It was easy enough to operate even taking into account waiters’ forgetfulness. And that lady who has shared information soon became the spouse of administrator from another restaurant and stopped to visit the restaurant. Gradually Deribasovskaya Street has been selling to “friends”. Strangers have leased the premises and earned a little bit money. Everyone, including us who have taken a great interest in the words hospitality, empathy and culture were satisfied.

*control authorities

I will post the continuation next Saturday

• Part 3

Tags: Odessa, Restaurants, Стейкхаус

On the motorway Оdessa-Kiev I saw an interesting sign: restaurant Hata Karasya. 30 kinds of  vareniki. Sushi bar. Ukrainian cuisine.
By all appearances it is one of the renamed projects of Poplavsky.

It isn’t easy to be a chancellor, to sing and to be a restaurateur and especially simultaneously.

Neon advertising of the restaurant is seen at a distance of approximately a kilometre.

I didn’t take along my camera… what a pity!

Tags: Restaurants