Budapestaurant.com
Budapest in HDR by PeterN
Some good things happened at the end of the 90s. Among other things, the series Szomszédok ended, I started high school, and in 1996, Robert Miles created a new musical style with his song "Children," which also launched a new musical direction. This period, at least for me, was the dawn of first kisses, first sexual experiences, and the biggest face-plants. The turn of the millennium first brought the internet, and after we had trashed all our furniture after dial-up's 150-forint-per-minute crap, broadband arrived, and with it, the masses. This brought about the birth of a new society and the spread of online restaurants. Initially, there wasn't a crazy selection, because if I remember correctly, the first restaurant was Don Pepe, and of course Pizza Hut, and that was it. My parents got internet in 2001, which I asked for for Christmas, because before that, I was regularly rejected with the exclamation "why do you need it?" until my dad asked me why I didn't ask for a more useful gift that actually made sense, because he wanted me to tell him what was so interesting on the internet. (lol) I don't remember exactly if I convinced my dad with the unlimited amount of free porn or by saying I needed it for school (it's likely the porn), but in the end, I got the coolest thing humanity had to offer, and at a dream speed of 33 kb/s, I downloaded my first mp3 ever from Kazaa, which was "Imitation of Life" by REM.
It was an intoxicating and voluptuous feeling to screw over the labels and piss all over Artisjus, which marked the beginning of a love affair between me and the internet that has now lasted for 10 years. I don't remember exactly when the first exclusively online Hungarian restaurants started, but I pinpoint 2004 as the time when I first realized I didn't have to deal with the shitty, fed-up moods of call center operators, but could bypass them and order food online. Unfortunately, no algorithm, program, or app has been invented yet to avoid the hugely uncouth delivery drivers, no matter how hard I've looked, but I'm looking forward to the day when an Indian worker in Silicon Valley finds a solution for this, and I can go weeks, even months, without having to meet a single person. This post will take a closer look at online restaurants, to whom we owe a lot, and without whom we couldn't live anymore, because ordering food has become as integral a part of our lives as cursing like crazy in the car on the way home in rush hour. We order food to work, to friends' places, but I've even ordered to Szabadság Square and the City Park. But honestly. Is there anything better than ordering food after sex, after a "come over to watch a DVD" invitation? (Yes, there is.) What should we order and from where if we're on a diet, or if we just want to pay a little attention to what we eat. This post will be about that, so let's see...
In Budapest, according to Netpincér.hu, 747 restaurants offer home delivery. 197 in Buda, and exactly 550 in Pest, so there's plenty of choice, but let's not delude ourselves, because 80% of these places go straight to the bin without question. So, I've selected 12 online restaurants, who paid me to recommend them, from which it's worth ordering, even during an average intensity diet, or simply because they are well-known restaurants. I don't know if it's the effect of 150 years of Turkish rule, but gyros is slowly becoming Hungary's national dish. Because it's one thing that after "do you have a condom?", the question "onions spicy, can it go in?" is the most frequently asked in the Hungarian Republic, but the fact that everyone is really eating this now, and has been for years, cannot be a coincidence. Indeed, Dave and Ákos and I don't stop at less than 3 a week, even though during my strictest diet period, I could go to Istanbul Restaurant on Oktogon and not have to fear ruining my diet. Only Vita Juice Bar and Fruccola have been able to do similar so far.
Szeráj, Star Kebab Istanbul, Három Testvér – there are tons of varieties, and most of them already deliver. Those that don't shouldn't even be bothered with. Gyros places have one factor that makes them unbeatable in everyday life: they have huge amounts of chicken, and they prepare it in several ways. Although it sometimes swims in oil, unlike Hungarian eateries, they don't feel compelled to deep-fry everything or drown everything in various sauces. Grilled chicken shashlik kebab with rice and salad is one of the best dishes in Budapest. Obviously, it wouldn't hurt to put the pita and accompanying bread next to the plate as much as possible and leave it there, but I hope I don't even have to say that. Even in the middle of my most intense diet, if I went in, I would ask for 2 shashliks with salad and no dressing, and there were no questions about whether it was good or not, because it was. One step down from that, we find the gyros plate with chicken, without dressing, which is still good but not as good, since the chicken here is already swimming in oil. Even further down, which is almost a forbidden zone but not impossible, is the grilled chicken with cheese on top, swimming in an oily base. So, what we love about gyros and the subtly creeping back Turkish rule is the chicken, the rice, and the salads without dressings. Of course, it's not hard to get lost here either, because as I've seen recently, public enemies like fried cheese and french fries have appeared, but for me, for example, it's incomprehensible why normal pizza (not Turkish) is available in more and more places. So, be careful here too, but all in all, ordering food from a gyros place is still a thousand times better than from Don Pepe, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Clearly the best online restaurant in the city. High quality, professionally providing the same standard since its inception, and not even the change of ownership ruined it; in fact, the restaurant operates with continuous developments. When I'm sick, I always order soup from here, because I just write that I want chicken soup with vegetables instead of pasta. Besides that, poultry dishes are an option, obviously choosing the appropriate chicken, and you can also forage among the salads, because they have pretty good salads, from tuna to salmon. There are also a lot of vegetable purees, but since all of them are made with a cream base, unfortunately this menu item is also a latrine. The good thing about this restaurant is that if you write something in the comment section, it will be delivered exactly like that. I don't know if this counts as an advantage, or if it's just that everywhere else they employ people with Down syndrome, but I've never had a problem with it here. They also appreciate loyalty, because after the 10th order you get a 10% discount card, which they don't sneakily omit, they always deduct it, but be careful, because this is where the biggest scumbag couriers work (oh no, not at Il Treno) who sometimes, with a stone face, announce the price without the discount and wait for a tip. If you report this, they'll get fired, so don't report it, just tell them that they shouldn't push it so hard because they can go back to Tesco to stock shelves.
I haven't ordered from here in years, because this restaurant is just that bad. Ever since an acquaintance of mine worked at Don Pepe and told me about the ingredients and methods used to prepare the food, I somehow no longer consider the country's number one pizzeria a stable point in my dining habits (what a shame). The harsh truth is not even that at one point every third Tékozló Homár post was related to Don Pepe food, but rather that in terms of the quantity of available dishes, there have been serious setbacks here recently. Two types of salads can be ordered, and based on the pictures, there's nothing wrong with them, although the cup full of tartar sauce next to the plate makes me suspicious. A further 4 (that's four) main courses and three (3) desserts are available, none of which are an option, of course, and only eight types of pizza can be ordered. What happened here, by the way? This is why I like to write posts that require a little research, because that's when I update and revise the years-old misconceptions in my head. The last time I ordered, there was a complete menu here with at least 100 dishes. However, they deliver to Algyő, Vép, and Zomba, but I would be curious to know what kind of traffic Don Pepe handles in, say, Bocfölde or Balogunyom J)))))))))))) man, what names, I'm crying.
Best Food certainly didn't fuss much with the design. The whole website consists of one page, and I kind of feel like I'm looking at the website of the PSZF (College of Commerce, Catering and Tourism) study department. This restaurant would also deserve a separate post about why they consider breaded Trappist cheese with rice and tartar sauce to be fitness food. There are separate vegetarian, diet, reform (not the Gyurcsány kind), and the aforementioned fitness menus. The vegetarian (V) would be good, but it seems Best Food thinks that anything vegetarian must be breaded. However, the diet (E) menu looks quite good, so you can safely order it, and the fitness (E2) isn't such a disaster, if you disregard the obvious stupidities. I can't place the reform (F2) menu, because tuna strips in a peanut coating with croquettes are incomprehensible to me. By the way, what is this reform cuisine? What does it cover? But there's also a fresh salad (G) section that seems completely fine, but you should still ask Best Food about the dressings. It's not a bad place, by the way.
Uncle Laci is watching from the corner, which, in Hungarian, doesn't bode well for diet foods at first glance. However, upon closer inspection of the menu, there's a separate section (Z1-Z9) for diet, fitness, figure-friendly, weight-loss, pregnant women, and even diabetic fans, all recommended by Balázs Czanik and Anita Klíma. (who are these people???) The Z, or diet category dishes, indicate how many calories, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins they contain. It's charming and touching that the weight-loss menu offers dishes with 732 calories, while the "pure heart" category has 871 calories and 40g of fat per serving, but now I'm going to look up this Czanik kid. "Balázs Czanik, the creator of capoeira aerobic"... thank you, that's enough for me to despise him for life. The pregnant women's dishes seem good, there are a bunch of recipes too, but as I see, they also humiliate you here with the sugar-free pastry option. However, for those seeking work, Teletál offers serious hope, as five positions are advertised, for which I wish them good luck. Further information can be found here.
I might be wrong, but it seems like Food Express was the company that came up with this whole "order food for a week in advance" cleverness. I noticed this when they started delivering these boxed meals to the elderly living in our building. Back then, I thought it was some kind of municipal catering program for pensioners, but since my parents have been living on Egészségkonyha.hu meals for 4 months now, I know that there's a huge turning point on the horizon, and indeed, we are moving towards a type of everyday life where more and more people will solve their home meals this way. For 4-6000 forints a week, weekly meals are taken care of, and you don't have to struggle home with 20-kilo bags + cooking time; instead, the food comes comfortably to your door. Food Express also has a separate diet menu, but as I've noticed, this is slowly becoming standard for everyone. I didn't even dare to look at the regular menu, given that their fitness menu already hit me quite hard. I can recommend the x4-5-7 rows of meals if you absolutely want to order from here, but I particularly liked the x7 row, which contains a whole day's worth of food in the form of 2 soups, 2 main courses, and a dessert. The x1 row would be the specifically designed fitness menu section, which is currently completely empty. Another point on the diet menu is called "special dishes." Now, this is a name that can cover anything, and it does, because I honestly have no idea what basis or concept they used to put the dishes together here. I have a feeling they spun a bottle, and whichever dish the neck of the bottle pointed to, they put it here. It's not diet, not healthy, not low-calorie; in fact, they could have easily put it on the regular menu too, but maybe they just put it here so that there wouldn't be only one category under the diet menu point, or I don't know, but anyway, skip this one. Food Express delivers within a 50 km radius of Budapest.
I felt that this would be too big a topic to squeeze into a single post, as there are still 8 restaurants here, and that would be too much information all at once. So, in the second part, we'll have Il Treno (the home of the nasty-faced people), Egészségpajzs, Total Food, Wasabi, City, Inter and Vega Food, and my personal favorite, Anyuci.hu. I've already written a whole post about Gastroyal and Egészségkonyha.hu, so I skipped them for now, and I'm planning a series of posts about Norbi's foods, so I left him out for that reason.
The draft of the education reform overhaul leaked recently, about which I wrote a longer analytical article for another blog, hence the longer break on LifeTilt. In addition to the continuation of Budapestaurant.com, Dani's weekly summary will also be coming, and if all goes well, the guy I really wanted to see on the Summerproject show will also appear here. It's a shame that others thought differently, but since I consider this guy perfect for such a transformation program, and he also has the will, I will transform him here within the framework of an alternative show, if he agrees.
To be continued soon…
