The Grand Budapest Cafes — Where To Go, What To Drink

Sabina Weston
Jul 22, 2017 · 4 min read

Last week, a friend of a friend (incidentally, my friend now) came to visit Budapest and asked me (via Instagram chat) what places do I recommend. My list included typical tourist attractions such as the Dohany utcai synagogue, the Citadella (preferably at night), and the Ludwig Museum (as a way of escaping the July heat — Budapest is supposedly the hottest city in Europe at the moment, with temperatures climbing as high as 35'C). However, a person (tourist) needs to drink in between sightseeing. Especially coffee, since walking around a 35'C degrees city may leave you drowsy and wondering why you decided to visit Budapest in the first place (they don’t take cards in a lot of shops here). Therefore, I decided to compose a list of my favourite cafes, in case you decide to buy that last-minute Wizzair plane ticket to Hungary (to come visit me, naturally). Cafes are not ranked in any particular order, but since the attention span of a typical reader may not be impressive, I will try to place the best ones first.

Fekete

A great place to seek refuge from the 4pm noise and dust which accumulates at the nearby Astoria intersection (it’s not called that, it’s just under the formerly-exclusive Astoria Hotel and the tram/bus/underground stations named after it). There’s wi-fi and a cute courtyard, with fairy lights hanging above you while you sip your coffee and pretend that you can afford the rent in the charming apartments above and you just came down for a daily flat white. Fekete also sells cups, so if you’re looking for a way to be relevant in Budapest, you can easily purchase one and use it for drinking your home-made, shitty (yet cheap) aeropress coffee.

Konyha

The most important fact about Konyha is that it has AMAZING FOOD. It’s more expensive than I would like to admit, but it’s so, so worth it. I’ve never had anything in Konyha that I did not like. This leads me to my second most important fact, which is that “konyha” means “kitchen,” a useful word in Hungarian but I can’t really think of a reason why. The coffee is decent, the lemonades are amazing. However, coming back to the crucial point, please order some food if you go there. Konyha is the only place where I could find lamb sausages (I once spent 3 hours on a Saturday looking for them in the Grand Market Hall, Tescos, and Aldis, without any luck). Now that I think of it, I need to come back there only to ask where they got them from.

Madal

Madal has three locations in the city: near Ferenciek tere, next to the Parliament, and near Margit bridge (the one which takes you to Margaret Island). Madal’s interior is modern, minimalist, using light wood for chairs, tables and staircases. They have quite a variety of tasty coffee beans and cakes (the banana bread is really something). Upon further inspection, Madal may seem like it’s run by a sect (they seem to really worship that one Tibetan guy — all the black-and-white framed pics are of him and there’s even a small statue at the Ferenciek tere location). Anyway, Madal is a great working place and I am actually writing this guide from there. It is quite unfortunate that it closes at 7:30pm on Saturdays (so I really need to wrap it up).

Kelet

If you prefer your cafes vintage and with an abundance of books, try Kelet. It is the only cafe listed here which is on the Buda side. The coffee is decent and I love their carrot cake, especially the frosting (most cafes make carrot cake but they just can’t make the frosting just right). However, despite it’s flawless internet connection which helps me download movies, the music they play is a bit too loud for me to work efficiently on my laptop. Also there’s that one waitress who embraced my boyfriend for a few seconds too long (kinda awkward) and really did not refer to me, opting to converse only in Hungarian with him (which I very obviously do not speak). But the coffee is okay.

Csiga

Csiga means snail and that is by far my favourite Hungarian word. I spent a lot of time studying for my Philosophical Problems in Science (Theory of Physics) exam, which I only passed at my 6th attempt, incidentally after studying for it in Csiga (and one time in Konyha as well). The food is tasty and inventive, and the interior is very pleasant. I cannot vouch for the coffee because I only had tea in there. Csiga is not really on the way to anything (except that one Chinese store which is right next door and which sells 5kg bags of sticky rice — just in case you wanted to know), but I strongly recommend visiting anyway. Attached is an Instagram pic of the interior which exceeded the 100-like mark (something which I don’t experience very often).

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