Buddha Bar Hotel Restaurant
Staying in the Buddha Bar Hotel, we wanted to go for dinner in the restaurant. The restaurant is quite dark but does have the Buddha Bar atmosphere although not near the Paris Buddha Bar.
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| Wooden Buddha in the Buddha Bar restaurant |
We ordered some Buddha Bar Special cocktail which were ok. After that we wanted to try some local wine. We ordered the local Tokaj wine as well as a bottle of Sake. The sake was very good and given the price, had to be.
We ordered the sushi variation menu as well as á la carte. I ordered the wan tan soup as a starter.
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| Wan Tan soup |
The Wan Tan soup was very good although a big portion with lots of vegetables. There were about 3 wan tans in the soup which were very tasty. It had an interesting taste but you could notice that they gave you a lot of soup and vegetables and few wan tans. Not optimal, but tasty.
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| Sushi menu |
The sushi menu contained the plate you can see on the picture as well as a desert.
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| Chicken with Buddha Bar spicy noodles and vegetables |
We also ordered the chicken dish with vegetables and the Buddha Bar spicy noodles. The chicken was partly fatty. You had to cut off the fat chewy pieces because they were not edible. The Buddha Bar spicy noodles were tasteless. the vegetables were ok but not cooked enough in part. Overall this dish was a great disappointment. I knew that the Buddha Bar is mostly famous for fish, sushi and what not, but did expect something better than this. The quality in Paris is definitely 2 levels above the quality in Budapest.
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| Cheese cake |
With the sushi menu, there was a cheese cake for desert. This was ok.
In general, the Buddha Bar restaurant in Budapest does give you the Buddha Bar experience and atmosphere. The staff however seems helpless and not prepared for the service level and experience Buddha Bar is prepared to offer. For Budapest, this seems to be a chic place but it is definitely not the experience you would expect from Buddha Bar. I suggest you go find that in Paris our Dubai.
Budapest Ice Bar
There are a couple of these ice bars in Budapest as we later found out. We looked on Tripadvisor an searched for that bar.
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| Ice Bar Budapest |
You go in, buy a ticket and you get a free drink with the entrance ticket. They also give some sort of overcoat. The temperature inside the bar is -4 degrees celsius.
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| Ice Bar interior |
They give a drink which is vodka with some juice. When you hold the glass, it seems to be melting. When you order the second one, the glass melts if you use the same one suggesting it is not as cold as they claim. It was a fun experience anyways, good for picture taking.
La Cucina
This restaurant is located on Vaci Utca 20 in the centre of Budapest. When walking past we thought about stopping by. The pizza looked nice and this is also a good place for people watching.
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| Pizza |
I ordered the pizza. This was just for lunch. Pizza was ok. When they brought a pizza which was slightly black and overcooked they asked me themselves if they should bring a new one. Of course I said that they should bring a new one. I would like to mention that we had ordered a bottle of Hungarian Rosé already.
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| Pasta with giant prawns |
The pasta with giant prawns was fresh and very tasty. On the whole, this was a good place to stop for a bite. The service was ok and it seemed to be better than most of the place along that street or in the vicinity.
Cyrano Restaurant Budapest
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| Strawberry yoghurt cream starter with grenadine |
Cyrano was a restaurant we walked past. We thought that this would be a place to try out after having seen the restaurant and the menu from the outside. We went there on a Friday evening. We had some local cocktails as an aperitif.
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| Goat cheese on brioche with lavender ice cream |
We had a very interesting starter. We had goat cheese on brioche with lavender ice cream. The combination seems odd at first but was rather interesting and very well presented. It was a new experience.
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| Goose liver, and beef on langos, Hungarian style |
Ordering wine in Budapest is not that easy because most of the local wine is not really drinkable as far as I am concerned. We chose a Mondavi wine because this seemed to be the best choice in terms of value for money. I ordered the Cabernet Sauvignon 2007. Of course I would never order a pure Cabernet Sauvignon but as any mediocre wine connoisseur knows, Californian wines are more like rocket fuel and do definitely not consist of one grape or two. They are simply not oblige to show the complete cuvée on the their label. I do like Mondavi. Either way, the sommelier came along and said that he can only offer the 2010 vintage. We agreed to have it and were not disappointed. Being in Hungary, this was the best wine we had there.
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| Lamb with Hungarian vegetables and mashed potatoes |
We also had lamb with Hungarian vegetables and mashed potatoes. All of their dishes where somewhat interesting with a local touch. This was quite interesting. The service was also good although they did not think about pouring wine or water when needed.
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| Chocolate cake with liquid chocolate filling |
The desert was a highlight. I ordered the chocolate cake which was somewhat like a chocolate soufflé. It came with some berries and ice cream. On the whole, we had a great dinner.
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| Poppy seed parfait |
We also had the poppy seed parfait in a mint sauce with orange zest. This was a rather interesting combination.
All in all, Cyrano was an interesting restaurant. It is modern, with interesting cuisine implementing Hungarian tastes. This is a restaurant I would definitely recommend when visiting Budapest.
