Hungarian Food: Impressions

My first reaction to Hungarian food was that it’s not very photogenic. In the first week, the Babilon Language School took us to a small restaurant in Taksony for a sampling of the Hungarian culinary tradition, and after I had loaded my plate with all manner of roasted pork, stuffed cabbage, and other stewed meats and grains, I thought to myself “the only two colors on my plate are white and red.” So besides the fact that I was ravenous and couldn’t wait to dig in, that’s the unfortunate reason I didn’t take a photo of the food.

Luckily, when we went to Eger (more on that later) our bubbly guide Emese took us to a glorious contemporary restaurant that served Hungarian food but very prettily. So without further ado, a glimpse of the Hungarian palate:

The first course: the famous Hungarian goulash. This version featured a rich beef base thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (and blood red to boot) but I’ve also had less fancy more soup-like variants of this delicious, paprika flavored dish.

The main course was a lovely chicken paprika dish with an egg noodle base, a modern take on chicken paprikash. Note the heavy use of tejfol here!

Dessert was Hungarian pancakes. When I first heard “Hungarian pancakes,” I was expecting latke-like things, but these are sweet crepes stuffed with túró and topped with apricot jam and berries.

The stars here are meat and dairy. Hungarian food is very heavy and not very vegan friendly (at all). But with all the fat and spices, it’s honestly objectively delicious, even if it’s not the best diet for avoiding heart attacks.

I have three major observations about the food:

1. One of my new favorite ingredients is the Hungarian tejfol (pronounced “tay-fol”) which is an interesting mix of sour cream and yoghurt that’s perfect for cutting through all the fatty spicy meat and sausage, or for dolloping on a bowl of thick goulash. In the previous picture, there are about 2 pints’ worth of tejfol dolloped on the main chicken dish. Two of my friends on the program like to joke about how they killed a liter of sour cream here within a week thinking it was Greek yoghurt (mixing with peanut butter and such) before they realized otherwise, but honestly, I think it's an understandable mistake. Tejfol tastes more like yoghurt to me than American sour cream. I’ve put a little in oatmeal to make it creamy and it’s pretty good.

2. If the “white” in Hungarian food is all that tejfol and carbs and such, the red is definitely paprika (Hungarian for the Cubanelle-like peppers that are cheap and ubiquitous here). Paprika, paprika powder, paprika paste (which comes in toothpaste-like tubes), and all derivations of the spice are in everything here. Which means, at least according to me, that Hungarian food has all the heaviness of British food with none of the blandness!

3. Sweets. Good God, Hungarians know how to do their sweets. My sweet tooth is having a field day. Pastries and cakes, in fact all manner of sweets, are ubiquitous here in what are known as cukrászdas, which are “sweet shops” that sell any kind of sweet a sugar maniac can think of in one convenient location. In one particularly famous Jewish cukrászda, I sampled flódni, a three layer pastry of crushed walnuts (mmm...), poppy seeds, and apples. At a Hungarian restaurant on the first week, my roommate and I had the good fortune of ordering Somlói Galuska, a beautiful sponge cake trifle drenched in chocolate sauce as dark as hell and a little boozy (so, in a word, divine). But the sweets don’t have to be fancy. In every subway stop I’ve been to I’ve seen pastry shops galore where everyone lines up to buy pastries filled with csoki (chocolate) or túró (like cream cheese).

Unfortunately, I have lost many a two hundred forint coin at such shops.

Flódni from Fröhlich Kóser Cukrászda

The beautiful Somlói Galuska from the first night. The little fruit on top, we discovered, is a delightfully sour “ground cherry”!

And finally, to talk about drinks. Hungary is wine country (not beer, like its western neighbors) and thank God for that- I’ve always disliked beer. I’ve had two official wine tastings so far, and have swirled and breathed in wine as pretentiously as I possibly can. But by far the best thing about Hungarian wine culture is that it’s extremely common to drink wine at bars (even not-fancy bars), which means I no longer have to look like a dweeb drinking a glass of wine while all the cool kids drink Coors Light or something.

Wine and desserts, friends. Pray I don’t come home with diabetes.

Me at wine tasting numero uno trying to be fancy with a fancy rosé.