| rev:text
| - A dive bar with an ethnic menu? Good reviews? And unique Hungarian food? Hmmm.... sounds like a place to check out! And indeed, that's what we did when a friend came to town for the Marathon.
We made a reservation (was not really necessary) and used our GPS to find the place. The decor on the outside is not very promising, nor is the impression on first walking it to the place. This is the classic neighborhood bar. Somewhat dark inside; long bar on the right side of the room with some TVs showing sports about the bar; small tables along the right side; etc.
When we walked in there were three people seated on the bar stools and two tables were occupied along the left. A woman seated at the bar turned to look at us and started speaking --- turns out she was the owner or manager of the place! She took us to a table that was towards the back of the room - beyond the bar - gave us menus and told us our waitress would be along shortly, then she went back to her bar stool. Ummm....
Looking over the menu, we see that it really does feature Hungarian dishes. We started looking over them and tried to decipher some of the unfamiliar dish names and our waitress came over offering water and other drinks. We asked for the wine list and she quickly brought both. We asked for a few clarifications on the menu items and she really knew her stuff. We decided on an appetizer and continued deliberating what to eat.
A few minutes later we decided to order a soup, a second appetizer, a main dish, and two side dishes to share and were wondering about what wine to pair with it when she came back. We asked for help as we do not know Hungarian wines except for the sweet Tokajis (which were NOT going to work with this food!) and she admitted that she is not a wine drinker, but she took our order and had another server come by.
The second one, was able to help us a bit - her wine knowledge was also rather limited - but she eventually convinced us to try a dry cherry wine that she claimed was Hungarian. As it happened it really did work well with the food we ordered, even though it was not a Hungarian wine!
On to the food:
We started with the fried dough appetizer - this tasted like a savory puffy doughnut and with the grated parmesan cheese on top; steaming hot; it was delicious. It was light enough that we did not feel like we overdid it on the first course!
The soup was a good chicken soup with carrots, peas, and a version of Spaetzle - very tasty but not exceptional.
The Chicken Palacinta was a light crepe filled with ground chicken and covered with a light tasting sauce of some kind. Not sure all the ingredients in the sauce, but the whole dish was light and flavorful.
Chicken Paprikas had a pounded chicken breast that was a bit overcooked so that it was dried out, but the combination of the spaetzle that it was on with the sauce it was drenched in made up for that mistake. The whole combination was very tasty.
The two side dishes that we got were also very good. The red cabbage was just sour enough to be enjoyable while the cucumber salad was sweet and vinegary and provided the perfect counterpoint to the creamy dishes.
When we stopped eating - with leftovers sitting in front of us! - our waitress came back and told us that they recently brought a Hungarian pastry chef from Hungary and that we should at least go and look at the desserts which were in a small refrigerator next to the bar. We complied. While trying to figure out what was what, the owner came over to us and introduced us to a young man sitting with her who was the new pastry chef. While he wore a Pittsburgh Penguins t-shirt, turns out his English is pretty poor so the owner translated between us. Needless to say, we had to try a few things! We ended up getting the following:
Shortbread cookie with an apricot filling, covered in chocolate, with the restaurant name in white frosting - yummy!
Layered cake with walnut layers held together with an apricot filing and topped with a chocolate ganache - yummy!
Dobos Torte - yummy!
In other words, contrary to our initial impressions, the food was really good, the desserts were outstanding and we heartily recommend the place to all comers!
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)