The heat is back in Budapest, and lately it has been too hot to cook and too hot to walk to the market. But it’s not too hot to crack open a bottle of rosé in the evening, and to eat chilled cherry soup for lunch. Check out my guest posts on the Appetizer blog of the National Post (Canada). I first wrote about my favorite things to eat in Budapest at this time of the year and then about my favorite places to drink.
In an entertaining article in the Washington Post last week by Jane Black she discussed how much spelling and grammar mistakes on restaurant menus bother her. Here’s her fantasy:
I enter a restaurant, order and sweetly ask the waiter if I can “hold on to the menu” during dinner. Then, using a distinctive purple pen, I discreetly copy-edit the descriptions of the dishes.
Caesar, not “caeser.” Shiitake, not “shitake.” Riesling, not “reisling” (though I’d quietly applaud restaurants that spell it wrong as long as the misspelling was consistent.)
Black will be in trouble if she ever comes to Budapest, where the menu mistakes would be way too many to correct with her purple pen. Spelling mistakes on menus is something that has long bothered me also, although in Hungary I excuse the spelling mistakes because the people writing the menus are Hungarian speakers, not native English speakers. (Black excuses ethnic restaurants from her rant as well). In Hungary it’s the often hilarious menu translations which stand out more than the excusable spelling mistakes. One of the most memorable that I have come across was the “chicken make you slobber” at a Chinese restaurant. I assume that the menu writer meant to say something along the lines of “mouthwatering chicken.” And then there is carp, that common Hungarian fish, which I have seen countless times spelled as “crap.” True, many people think that it is, but it’s not a very appealing description.
I generally find these translation mistakes to be entertaining rather than annoying (after all, if I had to translate a menu to Hungarian it wouldn’t be a pretty sight). But I do wonder why it is that so many restaurants here can print their menus (which at traditional places can be very long and often laminated, which is surely expensive) without having someone who speaks English at least read it over. But I guess that is just the copy editor in me.
On the other hand, it does really get to me when menu writers translate “pörkölt” (a typical Hungarian stew) as “goulash” into English. This happens constantly, and it just perpetuates the wrongly-held notion outside of Hungary that goulash (gulyás) is a stew. In Hungary it’s not a stew, but a soup. These menu writers who purposely mis-translate it just add to the confusion. I cannot tell you how many times that I have had discussions with waiters to try to get to the bottom of whether or not the dish listed was actually a soup or a stew. I once ordered a gulyás and received a pörkölt only to have the waiter insist to me that it was goulash. Even the fact that I ordered in Hungarian could not convince him that I knew the difference and that what I wanted was actually the soup, and not the stew. Do restaurateurs think that foreigners cannot understand the difference between the two? Now I have taken to either only using the Hungarian menu, or comparing the English menu to the Hungarian before I order. Maybe Hungary should do what the Chinese government has done and make an official list of suggested translations, even if it is just for these to two oft confused dishes.
Food Wine Budapest doesn’t officially come out until next week (Tuesday to be exact), and it has already gotten a few nice reviews. One of my favorite websites, Chow.com has written it up, and so has author/journalist John Mariani. In fact, Mariani has listed it as one of the “best food and drink books for the summer,” which makes me very happy.
We end up going to Lake Balaton at least once a year, sometimes more. But, I have to admit, I am not a big fan of the lake itself. I do love looking at it, preferably from the terrace of a restaurant, with a glass of wine in my hand. But, although I try every visit, I just don’t really like swimming in it. On our last trip there, about a month ago, I didn’t have this problem. Since it wasn’t swimming season, we just stuck to eating and drinking.
I wrote about what we ate and drank at two great restaurants here on Chew.hu. And I’d just like to emphasize that a meal at Szent Orbán Borház in Badacsony (a restaurant owned by winemaker Huba Szeremley) in itself makes a trip to Balaton totally 
worthwhile. Definitely, it’s one of Hungary’s finest restaurants, and for what you get it’s a great value. Pictured above is one of the tables from the restaurant’s big patio, surrounded by Szeremley’s vineyards and the lake in the background (although it’s not very visible since it was a cloudy day). Pictured on the left is the hidegtál (”cold plate”), which is a common offer on the appetizer menu in Hungary. Here, though, it is special since all of the meat on it comes from the heritage breeds like Mangalica pigs and Hungarian Grey Cattle which Szermley raises on his nearby farm.
This blog has been pretty neglected over the past few months. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been writing. In fact, I have too much interesting stuff on my plate right now, which has left no time for paying attention to this poor blog.
I have been contributing to Chew.hu on and off for awhile now, but over the past two months I have been writing for the site on a more regular basis. I have been working on helping to creating a database of Hungarian recipes for the site, and the “Treasury of Hungarian Recipes” already has more than 60 recipes in it. My main task so far has been translating the recipes from old Hungarian cookbooks, which is challenging, but is actually more fun than it sounds. After I got the hang of it, and learned all of the important words, phrases, and measurements, translating the recipes went surprisingly smoothly. I have also been contributing to Chew’s new “Encyclopedia of Hungarian Food and Drink“, cooking some of the recipes that I translated, and snapping photos for the site. Now chew.hu is much more than just a food blog. It’s an essential resource for keeping up with the Hungarian food and wine scenes, and digging into the details of Hungarian eating and drinking. Check it out!
Last week I finally saw the advance copies of Food Wine Budapest, and I still don’t think that it has really hit me that all of my work has resulted in an actual book. But I have two (rather thick) copies of the book sitting on my desk to remind me. The publisher has started planning which editors to send the book to, and we’ve been discussing ideas about marketing and publicity. It’s all pretty exciting.
I’ve also been busy with freelance articles (and I just got a commission from my all-time favorite food magazine). And, in other exciting news, I am now working on a new book. I don’t want to talk about what the book will be about yet (I’m not far enough into it to feel comfortable with that), but I will say that it is not food-related. But it is about Budapest, and the research will be just as much fun as the research for Food Wine Budapest was, but in a very different way.
Since I’ve been living in Budapest I’ve been eating more pork than I ever have before in my life. And the pork here is great. It’s definitely the meat of choice, and meat from the Mangalica pig–a heritage breed that nearly died out during the Communist-era–is the choicest kind of pork. We happened to be in Városliget (City Park) this weekend when a Mangalica festival was happening. See what I wrote about it on Chew.hu.
Robyn Lee over at Serious Eats posted this funny old Hungarian sausage commercial. If you’re really interested, check Lee’s post for the lyrics.
And, here’s another for sour cream:
If you’re out drinking, don’t even think about getting behind the wheel in Hungary. According to the new rules, any amount of alcohol is too much, and your license can be immediately seized if there’s any evidence that you’ve had even a drop. While there’s no reason to drive in Budapest anyway since the public transportation system here is so excellent, this can put a damper on going to wine tastings in the countryside. So, plan carefully! If you really do need to drive somewhere, luckily, there are lots of drink-and-drive taxi services (sofőrsegély) in Hungary. Here’s the drill: they will send a driver to pick you up (usually it takes at least 30 minutes to arrive, at least in Budapest) and then drive you home in your own car.
Some companies in Budapest include the following–if you’re in the countryside, ask around and you’ll probably find one (and let me know if you find any good ones):
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