Kiss Tel Aviv

KISS TEL AVIV
Pozsonyi út cover story (first published in 1998)
By Lucy Mallows

Pozsonyi út – or ‘Bratislava Street’ to give it its vaguely anglicised equivalent - runs through the XIII district of Újlipótváros (New Leopold Town) leading north parallel with Margit Sziget on the Pest bank of the Danube
It is now known as Kiss Tel Aviv (Little Tel Aviv), as a large Jewish community is gradually moving back into the rather upmarket district, recreating the pre-war environment - a cultural, educated community of politicians, writers, actors and the small traders and menders who give it an unmistakable atmosphere.
Shops along the acacia-lined street offer flowers, jewels, fur coats and beauty products, blending in with the old style shoe repairers, zip menders and dingy borozós (wine bars). There is an abundance of hostelries with terraces on the pavements, squeezed in between parked cars.
Shop-keepers all stand on their doorsteps, gazing out at the traffic and greeting passers-by by name. “Csók életem,” (Kisses, my life) says furrier Ica Nagy, with time on her hands, since the fur trade is stagnant in the heat of summer.
Her red neon Szûcs sign has beamed out from No. 13 for 45 years.
She has seen many changes in her 65 years of living in Pozsonyi út, which she says had a tram running along it and cobblestones, and must have resembled a thinner version of today's Bartók Béla út in Buda, until 1958.
In 1956, the peaceful scene was rudely interrupted in the autumn by Russian tanks. Nagy stayed in the street throughout the revolution and witnessed much fighting from her doorway. There are bullet marks on the walls above the shop and Nagy says, "I was even shot at when I hurried across the road to a café opposite to buy biscuits."
István Nagy opened his furriers (szûcs) in 1932, when many of the buildings were newly built. He died twenty years ago, but his seventy-year-old wife has continued the fur business on these premises with her son helping.
She says life was better in the old days, "The old style of rich people were very different from the new style rich."
She says the area was typified by gentle folk, actors and politicians. Now she lives in fear of burglars, as robbers are working their way down the street.



Much of Pozsonyi út's elegant buildings were erected in the thirties, and the style is inimitably square, solid, with the flats' interiors cavernous and spacious. Real estate prices in the area are soaring and the only reason Ica Nagy is not squeezed out is because she now owns the premises.
Another couple feeling the pinch are János and Éva Víg who have run the Víg-Vino Borkimérés at No. 5 (wine off-licence and specialty wine shop) for five years.
Before that, they sold spare parts, but like many of the small businesses which open and close every day on Pozsonyi út, they tried something different. It seems to be going well, on a Monday afternoon business is brisk, as customers pass under a beautiful claret and gold sign, which recalls past trading outlets.
The sign, Éva says is "Bordeaux for the wine and gold because gold comes from wine." János says he has over 300 hundred wines from all over Hungary, the best region he says is Villányi. "There is no better wine in the world than Hungarian," he says proudly.
Éva is not so enthusiastic, "If I could do it all over again, I would not open a shop here," she says, "People open businesses on this street every day because they think there's money in it, but we don't get so many customers passing through here and many close down soon. Only old people live here."
Besides specialist wines from private vineyards, they also measure out cheaper wine for pensioners who bring along recyclable bottles. "This used to be a very high class area in the past, but it's gone downhill lately," sighs Éva.
A sign engraved in stone above the door reveals that Ginczler Herman designed the building in 1939.
Pozsonyi út has a coffee pot mender, a watch mender, shoe mender, scores of bars and restaurants, you could live your whole life here and never have to leave.
Ágnes Asbóth, out walking her fox terrier, Samu has lived here all her 37 years, and has no desire to leave. She continues the literary traditions by proof-reading novels from her flat overlooking the park.
A walk down Pozsonyi út continually reminds us of the rich literary heritage, starting at Jászai Mari tér, named after great Hungarian tragedy actress, Mari Jászai, who played many Shakespearean roles in the now demolished National Theatre.
The street then crosses over Katona József utca, a plaque describes how he wrote Bank Ban.
Radnóti Miklós utca commemorates one of Hungary's best loved poets, a Jewish writer who died on his way back from a Hungarian labor camp. Some of his most moving poetry was found sewn into the lining of his jacket.
Not only Hungarian authors are credited. French writers Balzac and Viktor Hugo are also remembered in streets, as is Russian writer Nikolai Gogol.
Pozsonyi út begins in earnest after the Budai Nagy Antal utca where the two trolleys 76 & 79 have their termini, although in reality the route merely continues in a ring cycle all day long, leading along a back route over the Nyugati railway line to Baross tér and Keleti station.
On the corner at No. 3 is the Szamovár presszó (cafe), redecorated recently, and changed from the tradition brown presszó style into a hideous shade of kingfisher blue.
On the pavement outside is a little flower stall, one of the many flower vendors of Pozsonyi út, which while enjoying its fair share of busy traffic, can also claim to be one of Budapest's most green streets.
A little further on, the Piccolo Sörbár (beer bar) has a little terrace outside, where you can enjoy a cool korsó (half-litre mug) on plastic garden chairs under the trees. Many squeeze into its tiny premises, which still retains its sixties decor.
If you walked the length of Pozsonyi út and sunk a korsó at each of the many watering holes, you'd certainly not be able to walk straight back.
Over the road at No 4 is the Kandinszky bar. Inyenc ('taste treat') at No. 7 offers specialty teas and coffees and things in mayonnaise to take away.
Virágért ('For Flowers') recalls the socialist days when shops simply stated what you could buy - if it was in stock -virágért (for flowers), bútorért (for furniture), közért (for general goods).
Opposite at No. 10 is Villért (for lighting), still displaying the old, much the worse for wear, neon sign, where ‘lighting technology’ can be bought.
To illustrate Mrs Víg's statements, we next pass some empty show fronts, gathering dust, while opposite, a new, very chi-chi jeweller’s Grén offers special gold jewelry for graduation ceremonies.
Over the road at No. 10, the Kiskakkuk étterem (Little cuckoo restaurant) a famous old style Hungarian restaurant appears to be also in a state of transition and dust gathers in the windows.
Further along, István Gödör and György Takács run a hairdresser, where, to my horror, they once managed to tease my very short hair into a towering sixties beehive, which, no doubt took a certain skill and whimsy.



We are now on the corner of Raoul Wallenberg utca where an elaborate and tasteful plaque and bust conglomeration commemorates the Swedish diplomat whose heroic acts saved thousands of Jewish people from the gas chambers. Many of the houses on the street, for example No. 14, were used as 'safe houses' under diplomatic protection for Jewish to hide in during WWII.
A TV Shop showroom sits next to Novaglobus, which is worth visiting to see its window display of sinister equipment and spare parts. One can barely imagine what the plastic tubing and oddly-shaped creations are used for. Over the road, the Pozsonyi Kisvendéglô offers a good list of soups and meaty dishes.
On the corner with Radnóti Miklós utca is a little patch of green in front of the Herman Ottó primary school.
A statue of a young girl in white marble sits outside the red brick school building.
Opposite at Number 26, a very beautiful building with elegant balustrades and wrought iron work sits among the rather square thirties' blocks.
The Ipoly Café, named after a river that rises in Slovakia, at Pozsonyi út 28 always has a crowd of shifty-looking men in sunglasses, sitting outside on the pavement enjoying Segafredo coffee and gossip, while their radio phones lie dormant, lined up on the metal tables.
At Pozsonyi út 31 we are approximately half way along the street, at the corner of Gergely Gyôzô utca. There is a strong wine smell from the mulberry tree and its overripe fruit lying crushed on the concrete pavement.
On the corner with Balzac utca, the Cipôjávító szalon (shoe mender's salon) is an excellent shoe repairer which also mends shoes, cuts keys, un-snags zips, lifts skirts and reattaches all manner of attachments.
Opposite is a beautiful old fashioned borozó sign featuring a bunch of grapes of the Móri borozó. The sign says the wine comes from grapes produced on a state farm. Inside, little square tables are covered with green checked tablecloths in a very atmospheric modest bar.



Next door, a real estate agents offers a roof terrace on Balzac utca with 110 square meters, two and a half rooms and balcony for Ft120,000 per month rent. You can have a 55 square meter cellar on Szent István Park for 25 thousand forints a month
The traffic whizzes past in both directions and you have to pick your way gingerly through the cars parked all over the pavements too.
On Herzen utca, a beautiful building, designed by Hugo Gregersen in 1937, is decorated by a woman's face in stone watching over the door in the company of lions and griffins.
Crossing over Herzen utca, the Bébi Cukrászda (Baby Patisserie) has the traditional neon sign and some wonderful cakes and dolls made from icing in the window.
Szent István Park looks like a building site these days, which is basically what it has become. Hundreds of workmen bustle around, driving buzzing dumper trucks or shovelling earth mounds.
While restoration work trundles on, sad residents dolefully walk their dogs. Bereft of the once beautiful walking area, they wander over mounds of earth and rolls of wire.
Sándor Fegyverneky, chief builder for the XIII local government says the original style of the spacious, bushy park will not be changed. "The park will keep the original style, the pool, paths and bushes will all be renovated and replanted and it should be completed on September 1st." Fortunately, he says, the two empty temple stone buildings will not be removed. "The atmosphere of a park comes not only from its vegetation but from the buildings, so nothing will be taken away," says Fegyverneky.
Around the corner of the park, at Újpesti rakpart, a modest doorway leads to the ex-residence of ex-Prime Minister Gyula Horn. Just after he became PM, a dubious looking caravan tried to blend in with the bushy scenery in Szent István Park, and burly chaps in sunglasses sat all day watching something, while cables and wires lead to the apartment block.
On the left hand side overlooking the park, is a beautiful thirties block in white marble with arched doorways at Pozsonyi út 38. The Dunapark café used to be on the ground floor. Its modern, split-level interior is still visible through giant windows.
2010 Update: The Dunapark cafe has since reopened and its elegant Art Deco interior has been tastefully restored to its former glory. The cafe is very popular, especially in summer, when the tables and chairs spills out onto the pavement and almost into the bushes of neighbouring Szent István Park, also now renovated and restored (www.dunapark-kavehaz.hu).

At the junction with Viktor Hugo utca and Wahrmann Mór an amazing triangular shaped building with six sunny yellow balconies (see main photo at the top) looks like it must have been where they filmed the advertisement for Crepto toilet paper - the scene when each resident comes out onto the balcony and simultaneously cuts a slice of toilet paper.
However, in the Cosmax beauty salon underneath, receptionist Ilona Csányi says its not the building featured, "Although many people come in and ask whether it is," she says, adding that she thinks the area is still very high class, judging from the clientele of actresses and politicians' wives who come in for expensive treatments.
2010 Update: The Cosmax beauty salon is now the Sarki Fuszeres (Corner Spicey), an elegant new cafe and delicatessen. On my most recent visit, I spotted the writer, Budapest-authority and self-confessed Pest 'egghead' Andras Torok, sitting outside, drinking coffee and reading a novel. No doubt by Peter Esterhazy or Frigyes Karinthy...
It's worth peeping in the hall of this building, a little further along the street, as it has a famous Art Deco hallway and staircase.
Pozsonyi út 40's hallway is featured in this blog http://csakaszepre.blog.hu/2010/02/25/a_kapukon_tul

At Pozsonyi út 53 is the most beautiful doorway in the street. Peasant scenes are carved in stone above the door and the window frames are old brown wood offset by the dark green leaves of succulent pot plants in the lobby. Inside a rounded staircase leads up from an elegant hallway, lined with brown marble columns. It is the home of Mozsolits and Associates legal offices.
A smell of lecsó (Hungarian-style ratatouille) cooking pervades the heavy summer atmosphere, the paprika aroma is unmistakable. This is very much a lived-in street, despite all the offices and shops.
The Cheers sörözô at Pozsonyi út 52 is dusty and empty - it probably couldn't compete with the Tiszakecske Solohov borozó at No 48 where a korsó of draught beer costs only Ft95.
Further along, some of the housing estate apartment buildings are not so easy on the eye but at Pozsonyi út 63, the mood is brightened by a sign on the Hand in Hand (Kéz a kézben) delicatessen announcing “the sheep's cheese has arrived!”
On the left side of the road is the very blue, modern ÁPV Rt building, which looks out across the river to Margit Sziget. Next to the material is the spiritual.
The Pozsonyi út Reform church, where Bible classes, Sunday school and services all take place in the modern building, which looks marginally better from the river side. A separate Bauhaus-style tower recalls those in Pasaréti tér and Csaba utca.
Pozsonyi út started with a computer equipment shop and now ends with ABN Amro bank headquarters, within the high-tech commercial bookends lies a wealth of literary history.

Dob utca history

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Dob utca begins at Károly körút and runs up to Rottenbiller utca along the length of the long narrow seventh district of Erzsebetvaros (Elizabeth Town) which continues up to Dózsa György út and the Városliget - City Park.
Within is long and varied length, a microcosm of Hungarian society and history can be found.
A wide variety of craftsmen still ply their trade.
Gold and silver smiths, engravers, dyers, tailors, watch-menders and stocking repairers all still try to eke out a living in the high-tech world.
The street also offers many different cuisine styles: Jewish, strict Kosher, traditional Hungarian through pizzas and pasta to even Indian curries.
The origin of its name Dob (Drum) utca is a mystery, but the assistant at the Philon Antique Book shop at Dob utca 32 says it has always been called thus.
According to some local historians, the street takes its name from a pub called The Drum, which used to stand on the street.
The entrance to the street starts on Károly körút with what was the Tuborg Viking sörözô at Dob utca 2, a green Danish beer hall and restaurant that has as its most interesting feature a tall, tube shaped lookout tower, plonked on its roof.
The premises was bought in early 2001 by the Wendys Burger Bar chain.
On the right hand side at Dob utca 1 is an IBUSZ travel agent, then we get into craftsman territory with hundreds of tiny shop fronts offering a range of unusual and useful services.
If you need a brush, head straight for Dob utca 3, where Katalin Smulovicsné Winter offers every possible kind. Her name appears like a merging of three cultures – Hungarian, Slav and German, and likewise Dob utca is very cosmopolitan.
Green’s Fôzelék Bar is at Dob utca 5 offers fôzelék, a traditional style of serving vegetables in Hungary. Take spinach, green beans, peas, lentils, carrots, kohl rabi even and boil it up until all the goodness has long gone and it is a mush of thick soupy consistency.
Then add a roux of sour cream and flour to thicken it even more so that the spoon stands upright to attention in the middle of the bowl. Then serve with a fried egg floating on top of the spinach or pea goop, a rudely carved sausage bobbing on the lentils or some frankfurter sausages lolling about on the light green kohl rabi.
It sounds quite terrifying, but in the bitter winter months provides a comforting and affordable lunch.
Opposite sits the Mob pizzeria and further along on the left we find the Arany Pince Vendéglô (Golden Cellar Restaurant).
The nonstop on the corner at Dob utca 7 is well-stocked and always has bread on Sundays
Opposite the Mini Cukrászda at Dob utca 11, where a lady waits for the shop to open and cool her down with ice cream, is the memorial to the Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz, who helped many Jews avoid deportation.
The inscription from the Talmud reads, “He, who saves one single person, could also save the whole world”.
A moving and unusual statue shows a gold angel figure suspended perpendicular to the wall holding out a lifeline - a long piece of cloth to a figure lying prone on a brick mound below.
Jutting out into the narrow street is the Kóser Rothschild supermarket offering matzo flour and kosher products, imported from Israel.
Dob utca 16 is the gateway to another world, the entrance to the Gozsdu udvar, decorated with signs for a
goldsmith, violin repair and engraving, although gold and silver smith György Falk says now only five residents and five workshops remain in the 230-meter-long chain of seven courtyards, built in the early 20th century, linking Dob and Király utca.
“A Romanian lawyer, Manuil Gozsdu had the apartment and craftsmen's workshops built”, says Falk whose workshop is opposite a Greek Orthodox chapel, open on Sundays.
He says until WWII, Romanian students studied here.
Like the Gozsdu udvar, Falk's future is also uncertain.
He says he has heard that the Israeli investors who have promised to turn the courtyard into a shopping leisure complex have now pulled out, and the local government who own the building have not yet offered him a suitable replacement. “I don't want to move to the back of beyond”, he says, “This place is perfect, and customers could park right outside before the guards locked up the courtyard”.
Falk has performed delicate surgery on priceless gold and silver artefacts for 30 years.
Then, there were 80 families living in the thriving old-style shopping centre, but gradually families left or were moved out and tramps moved in.
Classical music plays in the background and the walls are laden with diplomas and awards.
However, Falk was not always appreciated. “The communists didn't approve of my individual trade and called me the derogatory term ‘maszek’ (private sector worker) but I am proud to be a ‘kisiparos’- artisan. I work with my hands”.
Until two years ago, the oldest resident András Szlatki ran the gentleman's hairdresser in the part now demolished by the spread of the Madách center.
Over eighty, Szlatki had stayed in the courtyard throughout the terrible war period, when the Gozsdu formed one wall of the Ghetto. “Local government tried to move him out, but he died and his shop disappeared”, says Falk.
Dob utca is a bustling lively street where the past and present mix almost unnoticeable, new galleries and burger bars appear every day but the sense of history is maintained.


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A modest sign at Dob utca 22 heralds one of the street's treasures.
The Fröhlich cukrászda has been producing delicious kosher cakes since 1962, although the establishment dates back to 1917.
Vera Fröhlich and her husband make the pastries in the back, specialties according to kosher rules on eggs, fat and no gelatin.
Vera’s husband has invented some unusual cakes, the Krakkói and the Szerelmes Levél (love letter) and the traditional Jewish Flódni a calorie-laden concoction of apples, poppy seed and nuts made with butter rather than margarine, although some favourites are off the menu at present because of the hot weather.
“An order was passed in the fifties, saying if the temperature stays over thirty degrees for more than three days, we are not allowed to make creamy deserts”, says Vera.
She hopes her children will continue the popular business, although the customers have gradually changed. “Many of our old customers have died, but this is still a friendly place, mainly visited by regulars and everyone talks to everyone else”, says Vera in between scooping out ice cream for workmen in the street and weighing out little cakes on antique red scales.
Fortunately business is booming, and the café doubled in size two years ago, replacing the hard stone floor with white tiles.
Some American Hungarians are visiting and have made this their first call on a tour of old favourites.
Vera's son, Robert Fröhlich, a Rabbi and teacher often holds meetings in the convivial surroundings, “The café's position, tucked away on Dob utca is a disadvantage for the owner, but an advantage for the customer”.
He says it is the only genuine kosher café in Hungary and possibly in Central Europe.
“The face of Dob utca and Klauzál tér has not changed, although in 33 years I have seen many new businesses move in”, he says.


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At the corner of Kazinczy look right to see Pest's Orthodox Synagogue, designed by Béla and Sándor Löffler in 1912, serving Budapest's small community of just over 3,000 Orthodox Jews.
The smashed windows look dark and forlorn but the Jewish lettering on the very top of the facade is still in very good condition
It is not normally open to visitors, but you can get a closer look around the corner at Dob utca 35 and through the courtyard by the kosher butchers still functioning since 1914 and the strictly kosher Hanna restaurant you can find the former orthodox school.
The Hanna restaurant has a heavy chocolate brown wooden gate
An Orthodox Jews in a wide-brimmed black hat and ringlets speaks Hebrew on the public telephone outside
Above telephone is the number 5673 carved into the stone.
This number refers to the date in Hebrew and iit also appears on the other side in Hebrew lettering
The wonderful Kiskacsa restaurant at Dob utca 26 offers “one plate home cooking Ft220 daily menu if booked ahead on a Wednesday”.
Opposite Kiskacsa is a walk way that resembles a monastery cloister, covered in unimaginative graffiti tagging. Kiskacsa (Little Duck) is the little sister of the more grand Kacsa (Duck) restaurant in Buda.
There follows a patch of bare ground where car parks utilize the temporarily flattened space, until another office block springs up.
A paper and colored metal recycling business on the corner of Holló utca and Dob utca keeps the spirit of the area with its shop front, which has the same design as the fading, scratched off shop fronts all along the street. A bright green placard reads, “60 kilos of paper equals one tree’s life”.
Looking back along Dob utca towards the river and you suddenly get a perfect view of the Liberation Monument on top of Gellért Hill and unexpectedly see things from a totally different angle.
Then for 200 yards, Dob is transformed into Klauzál tér and the street numbers run backwards, anti clockwise around the square.
At Klauzál tér 16, a traditional neon sign announces Mûhimzô - embroidery for flag making, emblems, tablecloths and sheets.
In the spacious shady park, one man has the unenviable task of shoveling up the dog excrement in the designated dog walking area. In the hot weather, the smell is overwhelming.
Unfortunately right opposite is the Óvoda - kindergarten.
Next-door, the deliciously-named Gasztroker sign offers catering equipment and trade shop
Children play in the park on new climbing frames and the air is filled with shouting and squealing.
In the early morning heat, bácsis in clean white vests are already setting out the dominoes, cards and chess.
It is maybe a little too early to go for refreshment in the Lépcsôs Sörözô although it open at 6am.
A wonderful yellow and purple sign shows the ancient prices: a kisfröccs (small wine and soda) can be édes or savanyú (sweet or sour) and appears to cost Ft10.
Édes nagyfröccs cost Ft25 and a savanyú Ft20.
Running at right angles to Dob utca is Klauzál tér numbers 13-8. At number 11 is one of Pest's five main markets which has virtually all been absorbed into a Kaiser supermarket now.
Just a few small stall holders remain offering limp lettuce wilting in the heat
Klauzál tér 10 is the home of one of the best lunch venues in town, the Kádár étkezde.
From Tuesday to Saturday locals and famous film stars sit side by side stocking up on real home cooking, goose legs and sólet - a hearty bean dish.


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Next door a plaque on the wall reminds passers-by that Klauzál tér was also a scene of confrontation in 1956.
A memorial tablet to Attila Gérecz who died, aged 27, reads “Only he who is bigger than his fate can win in the final push”.
The first grave of this poet of the revolution stood in the square and fading flags with the central communist motif burnt out are stuck behind the marble tablet.
By 1939 there were 200,000 Jews, living in Budapest, that number today is only 80,000, although they still constitute the largest community in Central Europe.
Klauzál tér represented the centre of the ghetto in 1944-45. Over 50,000 Jews were crammed together in terrible surroundings.
Local social worker Gábor Rotter says, "Many people died. First the bodies were kept in Klauzál tér market fridges, then when it was very cold they laid the bodies out in the square and buried them there."
Back toward Dob utca a nameless sörözô announces an interesting menu.
Things to eat are categorized as ‘before beer’, ‘with beer’ and ‘after beer’.
No prizes for guessing what is the main attraction.
Around the corner at Dob utca 45, a mini étkezde is more traditional about its offerings, proprietor József Karalyos offers home “home cooking, chilled drinks, speedy service and solid prices”.
The daily menu is mouth-watering - goose leg and cabbage for Ft600, roast duckling and parsley potatoes for Ft470 or stuffed pumpkin with dill sauce for Ft420.
The delicious ‘lucskos káposzta' (‘sloppy cabbage’) comes with a meat rissole and all the meals are typical of the area.
Over the road, above the gynecologist at Dob utca 46/b are six sculptured friezes, one on each floor, representing family life: a man, woman and child and a man gathering wheat to feed his offspring.
Further along, a beautiful old-fashioned sign, announcing Budapest Népruhazati -utility clothing- is covered by a cloth ‘for sale’ sign. Rotter says the interior layout is still intact and the territory is huge.
The district has produced a wealth of talented Hungarians and figures of contemporary Pest life. "The famous musician Gábor Presser was born just around the corner and his father used to have a stall, selling geese and ducks in Klauzál tér market," says Rotter.
Pop singer Szandi still lives around the corner in Akácfa utca and another local resident was the self-taught pianist Rezsô Seress who, in 1927, composed the melody to László Jávor's lyrics for ‘Szomorú Vasárnap, száz fehér virággal’ which became Gloomy Sunday, an international homage to melancholy, recorded by Billie Holiday, Ray Charles and Sinead O'Connor.
“Before the war, this area was 75 percent Jewish, now I would suggest the population is 50 percent Gypsy, with many living in the one-room, no comfort, outside-toilet flats that are so typical of this district”, says Rotter.
Despite the grime, Dob utca is known for its high proportion of restaurants and places of entertainment. At Dob utca 53, the Örökzöld Dallamok - Evergreen melodies restaurant you can listen to old-time music and dance on three levels in traditional surroundings.
On the other side of the road, at Dob utca 52, the Indian restaurant, Shalimar proves the cosmopolitan nature of this street. Next door is the stunning red shop front of the Háztatási Cikkek (Household Goods) shop owned by Éva Horváth. Next door to Örökzöld Dallamok is an ancient fur coat shop with the abrupt sign warning customers not to call.
Dob utca 57 parades the columns and yellowing yet intimidating walls of the Fészek Klub restaurant. Here, at the crossroads with Kertész utca, it is interesting to look around at the four different styles and shades of building in each corner.
A bright pink non-stop supermarket at Dob 61 holds all manner of foods you might need at three in the morning.
At Dob utca 60, György Lengyel operates one of the oldest men's tailors in the district and next door, Ferenc Kádár's decorative leather workshop is virtually a museum piece.


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At the corner of Dob utca and Erzsébet körút, a plaque reveals how in the Kör coffee house, now a fast food pizza and hot-dog büfé, Kálmán Teszársz started the socialist teachers' union which in 1918 became the national teachers' union.
Poet Mór Jókai also lived in this house from 1899 to the day he died, May 5 1904. The elegant spiky tower and weather vane that decorate this literary home is rather overlooked amongst the bustle of the ‘Nagy körút’.
Crossing the main boulevard, we pass the Örökmozgó cinema and from here on, according to Róbert Fröhlich, the character of the street changes, “This is not the real Dob utca, the real heart lies between the little and large boulevards. It is like comparing the two halves of Váci utca, only one is real”.
However, the first stretch maintains the mood with small craftsmen's' workshops, offering tailoring, a gargoyle-laden goldsmith and little watch repair shops.
On the left are two rather dodgy-looking bars, at Dob utca 70 the one-room cramped Talléros bar where five stools all face away from the door and stare at the shelves of pálinka. Further along, but also sharing number 70 is the Postakürt étterem, from where a stream of bleary-eyed customers totter out into the bright mid-day sunshine.
Over the road, an eye-catching group of István I and historical figures guard the entrance to the giant post office on the corner of Hársfa utca.
Gábor Boda's statues bearing more than a passing resemblance to mustachioed Aztec warriors. Next door, a philatelist's dream, since Magyar Posta produces the most beautiful stamps in the world, can be found at the Stamp Museum.
The Transport, Communications and Water Ministry building, an ugly concrete and glass mess takes up space next door, before you reach the much more eye-pleasing junior school at Dob utca 83.
The Art Nouveau building has a very colorful turn-of-the-century mosaic frieze by Ármin Hegedus showing children learning and frolicking.
Over the road, at Dob utca 80, the chemist's has original furnishings, including beautiful lamps.
Along this stretch, it is worth risking the wrath of a thousand néni's to peer inside a few doorways and see the hidden life of Pest, continuing in beautiful sunlit, leafy courtyards.
Children play football, harassed housewives beat carpets over specially-designed wooden racks and grannies watch the action from balconies high above. Dob utca 82 courtyard is particularly attractive.
As Dob utca progresses, it crosses Vörösmarty utca, Izabella utca and Rózsa utca, all streets which also cross the grand Andrássy út.
We are now running parallel with the elegant nobleman's street, however downtrodden Dob utca with all its dirt and dust seems to represent the real Pest much more pungently.
Looking left down Rózsa utca you can even see all the way to the hills of Óbuda. Hármashatárhegy appears as a distant mirage, shimmering in the heat and the dusty town centre and countryside are inextricably linked.
Eri néni's non-stop supermarket is at Dob utca 100. "The social level is the same the whole length of Dob utca. I had a non-stop at number 61 and the customers were just the same," she claims, after working here for a year and a half.
But, passing the Hearing Aid repair shop at Dob utca 85, life gets distinctly calmer.
The Erzsébet district Gypsy minority local government offices are located in a quiet courtyard at number 107.
Dob utca finally comes to an abrupt end when it meets Rottenbiller utca running at right angles.
On the left is Holmi Design and on the right, the central laboratories, botanical and zoological departments of the Veterinary University, and in just under a mile, we have completed a journey through Pest's history, culture and cuisine.
©LRM2000

The Centrál Coffee House

I wrote this article on the wonderful coffee house more than ten years ago, however the historical details are still interesting, I think.

Renovation work is now beginning on the one-time Centrál Coffee House.
Work started on the reconstruction on June 29 and will continue for a year and a half, with completion date pegged in at July 15 1999.
Dr. Somody Imre, director Pharmavit Rt. bought the building and is financing the 1,100 million forint project through a private company, which he established specifically for the coffee house renovation.
When it opens its door again in October 1999, the building, which stands at the southern left hand corner of Ferenciek tere will have office buildings on the upper floors, while the ground floor will recreate the former glory of the famous coffee house.
Together with the renovation work on the Ybl Palota opposite, this will make Ferenciek tere, the square of the Fransiscans, an elegant place of learning once again.
The university library stands on one corner, the Ybl Palota and the Károlyi Mihály literary museum further down the road, when the Centrál Kávéház is ready, the only corner with not quite such a high-brow reputation will be the northeast nook, where the Bonnie and Clyde bar offers roulette and darts.
The Central opened in 1887, in the freshly-constructed house belonging to Lajos Ullmann Erényi.
It was the heir to the Philosophus Kávéház which had stood a few blocks away a few decades earlier.
“The lamps and the whole interior decoration, like the marble tables, sofas, billiard tables, the whole games room and the coffee kitchen, moreover even the cups and the pots are so beautiful that it is impossible to imagine anything more beautiful,” wrote a critic at the time.
The Centrál soon became the centre of intellectual life, although it was almost exclusively male scholars and writers who made the Centrál their local.
It was the place where József Kiss edited the Hét (‘Week’) weekly literary paper, for which many big names worked before the Nyugat (‘West’) paper was formed. All the 400 coffee houses of the capital had subscriptions to Hét.
Kiss also taught young writers the secrets of language, verse and writing.
Famous writers worked here in the Centrál around the so-called “big writers’ table” - among them Kálmán Mikszáth, Sándor Bródy, Gyula Krúdy, Andor Kozma, Zsigmond Justh and Zoltán Ambrus.
Even Endre Ady, who had different home-from-home cafe, the Három Holló (Three Ravens) (now the Goethe Institute) was known to frequent the Centrál.
In 1907, younger writers in the Hét group formed Nyugat and soon moved their headquarters to the New York coffee house, on the corner of Erzsébet körút and Dohány utca, near what is now called Blaha Lujza tér.
Then, in the twenties the Nyugat paper moved back from the New York coffee house headquarters to its birthplace in the Centrál coffee house.
From 1905, the Centrál was run by former bank offers Gyôzô Mészáros, who was also the head of the Budapest coffee house association and he, as a professional protected the high standard of the artistic institution for many decades.
The atmosphere was conducive to writing, as wafts of coffee brewing aromas occasionally reached the writers, who sat hunched over scraps of white paper, waiting for inspiration.
Cigar smoke spiralled up towards the chandeliers, mixing with the low mutterings of authors thinking out loud.
No business deals or loud noises disturbed the creative atmosphere.
Mészáros put the men of letters on a special gallery so that the ordinary citizens would also be able to witness the shining examples of intellectual life, literature, science and fine arts.
Loud words, disruption of order, or snobbishness were not tolerated in the Centrál, which was open day and night.
The coffee house was philanthropic in its actions as well as its principles.
Those in need were helped with credit, small loans besides the moderately priced coffee, peaceful surroundings, and the Hungarian and international press.
The First War World disrupted the clientele of the Centrál as many young writers were conscripted. Zuboly (Elemér Bántai) became the first casualty amongst the writing regulars in 1915, two years later the poet Géza Gyóni also lost his life. “The only remaining piece of Pest was the Centrál,” wrote Mihály Babits.
It was somewhat shaken by the fighting, some of the tables’ marble tops were split, the mirrors had grown hazy, the porcelain buttons on the armchair coverings also showed the marks of time.
On the wall was a memorial tablet to Zuboly, with a bronze relief, under which was engraved some lines of verse by his friend Ady.
During the twenties, the Nyugat once again had its special table in the Centrál. Babits’s Sons of Death novel gave a role to this much-loved place where, “through the nonsensical cafe house smoke, the aroma of delights of days gone by fluttered”. Coughing slightly, the ‘sad poet’ Árpád Tóth, scuttled in, his lungs ruined by the damp air of his rented room, the printing room and the smoke from his own and surrounding cigars.
Zsigmond Móricz would make his slow dignified procedure over to the Nyugat table, sit down, drink a coffee, light a cigar and hide himself away in his thoughts and a thick aromatic cloud.
The Nyugat editor took his place without a sound, while Frigyes Karinthy and Dezsô Kosztolányi blustered in more noisily.
Aurél Kárpáti, Ernô Szép and Ferenc Molnár and the whole editorial team would spend hours discussing topics.
And so life continued in this bastion of literary life, “In the Centrál, where along with many famous or now forgotten men I also rocked my cradle”. wrote János Kodolányi.
Other scholars frequented the Centrál with their books, librarians, museum curators, and university professors.
Artists also sipped coffee in the Centrál, although they did not have a particular separate circle of their own here. József Rippl-Rónai signed one of his paintings with the words, “I drew this in the Centrál Coffee House”.
Many men of letters worked here day in day out, and went to the Centrál as if it were their office.
After the Second World War, the Újhold (‘New Moon”) editorial was formed and operated in the Centrál.
Ágnes Nagy Nemes, Pilinszky, Balazs Lengyel, Mándy, Sándor Rákos and others worked here on Tuesday afternoons until late at night, preparing the paper and editing.
In 1950 the Paprika Centre National Company took over the premises.
This company, which built the little yellow underground, made the premises its culture centre and canteen.
Then, from 1967, it became the Eötvös club - the popular ELTE students' club, where groups like Omega entertained the college crowd and Zorán and the Metro band began their careers.
The old stippling on the walls remained virtually intact.
However, the chandeliers made in Vienna were smashed and pawned at the MÉH - recycling depot.
Then the premises became home for the Wizards amusement arcade with an unspectacular and less literary tenancy until recently when Dr. Imre Somody bought the building.
Now, it is hoped, a thriving literary life will return to the heart of Pest. “That special place has now disappeared, the place that was neither club, nor pub, neither an association nor a restaurant, neither a casino nor a presszó, but something more democratic than all of these - a coffee house,” wrote Dóra Pataky, the interior designer for the new Centrál.
The Centrál will again be a place where, “fascinating discussions will whirl on all topics by a company of people who will talk and argue late into the night on politics, art and ideologies while women decorate the scene with their beauty”.

Centrál Kávéház és étterem
1053 Budapest
Károlyi Mihály utca 9

Table reservations: (+36 1) 266 2110
info@centralkavehaz.hu
www.centralkavehaz.hu

BARTÓK BÉLA ÚT

©LucyMallows2004
With its cubic cobble stones and plane trees standing guard along the way, ancient Hungarian craftsman’s workshops and fading neon shop signs, Bartók Béla út, in the eleventh district of Buda, was one of the few streets near the centre of town that looked typically Hungarian.
The cobbles have gone now, but Bartók, like Mester utca in the ninth district has that unique Magyar street ambience.
Others with their flashy palaces of denim and burger bars could be confused with streets running through other great cities of Europe.
The cobblestones are called macskakővek in Hungarian, meaning 'cat stones'.
However, this all changed in 2003.
In November, work began to remove the cobbles over which rattled the second largest stream of downtown-headed traffic. Every day 600,000 people jiggled along the painful route. The builders moved in and replaced the ancient electricity, gas, water and sewage systems.
After an agreement on the fourth metro line, the station diaphragm walls were sunk at Gellért tér, Móricz Zsigmond körtér, Kosztolányi Dezsô tér and Tétény út. Tram tracks and sidewalks were replaced and the green areas were given new park benches, flower pots and bollards.
Although the street looks a bit smarter, and the trams run more smoothly, the atmosphere has changed little.
Bartók Béla út, the street named after Hungary’s greatest composer doesn¹t actually contain much in the way of musical heritage.



At Móricz Zsigmond körtér there is a piano repair workshop and at the Budai Parkszínpad beside the Bottomless Lake (Feneketlen tó) at Kosztolányi Dezsô tér there are concerts by widely varying popular artists from Roma rap Fekete Vonat to guitar troubadour Péter Gerendás.
A statue of Bartók (1881-1945) by József Somogyi stands beside the lake, under a frame of bells.
Bartók Béla út begins at Gellért tér, graced by the beautiful Art Nouveau Gellért spa hotel and curves around the base of Gellért Hill to Móricz Zsigmond körtér. The fading Szabó photographer’s studio, second hand fur coat store and faded Cipôbolt share the wide, cracked pavements with more modern mobile phone outlets and optical showrooms.
The tiny, cramped book antikvarium (antique shop) front is almost hidden at 10am every day by the lines of pensioners who rob their own book-shelves to sell another selection of first editions for groceries.
On the right-hand side, some of the imposing buildings are worth a closer look, for the amazing stucco facades in pastel blues and greens and the hidden courtyards behind.
At No. 23 there is a fabulously grand yellow courtyard with Classical pillars, while No. 33 is a walk-in shopping area with a grotto and steps leading up to a leafy glade.
At the Bertalan Lajos utca tram stop, many homeless gather and sip wine take-outs from the countless borozós (wine bars, more proletarian than posh) on the street.
They sit under the statue to Géza Gardonyi who wrote Egri Csillagok (Under a Crescent Moon) and the building behind (No. 36-38) resembles a giant cinema Wurlitzer organ rising up in orange stone out of the street.
The doorway is guarded by two winged sphinxes with Cleopatra hairstyles.
A little further along at No. 40 is an interesting building designed in 1899 by Ödön Lechner, the father of Hungarian Art Nouveau, to accommodate his brother Gyula, a writer and painter.
The unusual decoration on the beige building resembles the stitching on the side of a blanket.



When Bartók died in New York in 1945, he left a condition in his will that no place in Budapest could be named after him, so long as there were still places like Hitler tér (now Kodály körönd) and Mussolini tér (now Oktogon).
Thus, immediately after the Second World War, the city decided to rename Horthy Miklós út after him along with eight other Bartók Béla út and utca dotted about Budapest.
Móricz Zsigmond körtér (circus) named, like the following Kosztolányi Dezsô tér, after one of Hungary’s great writers, is one of the busiest, most atmospheric squares in Buda, rivalling Mozskva tér for life and colour, noise, birds, flowers, trams, homeless, drunks and dog faeces.
A plaque to Móricz Zsigmond (1879-1942) reads “A Hungarian realist. The first to depict the realities of life of the Hungarian peasants”.
A neon sign high on the rooftops advertises the services of the Manfréd Weiss factory on Csepel Island and looks down on the simpler stylistic designs of a Mcburger bar’s golden arches.
The circus is a rickety wood circle around which trams rattle, the 18 and 47 on their way to Budafok, the 19 and 49 rumble all the way along Bartók Béla út to Kelenföld.
In the middle, a statue to Prince Imre by Zsigmond Kisfaludy Strobl portrays King Saint Stephen’s son who died in a hunting accident aged 24. Interestingly, this statue managed to remain as a resting place for tired pigeons throughout the Communist period.
The circus was designed in the late 19th century to the grand American plan, with wide streets and huge squares, continuing in style at Kosztolányi Dezsô tér which is quite a terrifying road junction where broad radial roads meet.
After Kosztolányi Dezsô tér, the road runs in an almost entirely straight line, cobbled all the way to Etele tér, in Kelenföld, the end of the line also for the famous No. 7 bus.
At dusk, the Bottomless Lake is one of the most atmospheric parts of Buda. The Szent Imre church is illuminated at night and shadows are thrown across the reeds and water of the former quarry pit, which is actually only a few metres deep.
At No. 62 a faded sign still bears witness to the one-time glories of the Bartók cinema.
This was part of an apartment block designed by Gábor Preisich and Mihály Vadász in 1934.
Preisich was a member of the Ciam group and was very influential in introducing modernism to Hungary.
This building is one of his best creations.



The street becomes more and more rural as it continues to Kelenföld, the ‘fields of Kelen’.
Outside No. 98 a pile of steaming horse manure on the pavement helps the village atmosphere.
Nearby is a horse tackle shop, a ‘Daisy’ gun shop, a knife shop and a garden equipment shop.
At No. 125 the Nagyon Kis Vendéglô (Very Small Bistro) is a family-run bistro offering ‘cheap home cooking’ and just along the way is the Melódiás Haladás Eszpresszó (Melodic Progress).
These types of establishments have died out in the centre of town but can still be found along the far reaches of Bartók Béla út, along with a wonderful workshop at No. 112 that will do everything from picture framing, to mirror cutting, zip repairs, bag lining and patches, as announced on a stylised brown sign.
The Karinthy Theatre at No. 123-130 has one of those ancient cinema signs, where you can click the letters into the lines to show what’s playing this week. A little further along the Szent Gellért church is a modern building, but look around the side to catch one of sculpture Imre Varga’s stunning works.
Jesus cradles Gellért in big silver wings with embossed metal decoration and carries him up to heaven.
In Brussels, a statue of Béla Bartók by Imre Varga stands in a forgotten square between the Grand’Place and the Centraal Station.
A group of Japanese tourists take photos and ask their guide who the statue depicts. “Bartók, a German composer I think,” says the young guide.
At No. 133 a huge tram depot stands with a yawning gate.
A group of static No. 19 trams gaze out from their shed.
As we approach Etele tér, we are now in the heart of Kelenföld.
It is somehow reminiscent of Szeged with wide tree-lined cobblestone streets and a sleepy Sunday afternoon ambiance.
Kelenföld was the centre of horseracing in the 16th century, introduced by the young King Lajos II in 1525 and the area was still fields and vineyards up until only 100 years ago.
The area received the name Kelenföld in 1847.
Prior to that it was called Tabán. The area became populated in the middle of the 18th century when grape workers moved in.
The origins of the name are argued about.
Some attribute it to ‘Krenfeld’ which is ‘Horseradish field’ in German and all the agricultural workers there at the time would bear this out.
Other say that there was a tribe leader called Kelen at the time of the occupation of the Carpathian Basin in 896 and they made their camps here and named it after him.

New York Palace history

When it opened in 1894, the New York Palace was home to a coffeehouse reputed to be ‘the most beautiful cafe in the world’ and a renowned centre for Budapest literary life. Fast-forward a century or so, and the building was a sorry sight, devastated by war and regimes not interested in aesthetics.
The Boscolo Group acquired the building in 2001 for €2.5 million and has invested a further €80 million in extensive renovation.
In May 2007, after a five-year restoration effort, overseen by Maurizio Papiri, Ádám Tihány and the lighting designer Ingo Maurer, the Boscolo Group, a small yet sophisticated Italian hotel chain, reopened the ‘palace’ as Budapest's latest luxury lodgings: a clear attempt at unseating the five-star monarch, the Four Seasons Gresham Palace.
Writers, artists and intellectuals flooded in and gazed around at the opulence, hoping for literary inspiration.
At the re-opening of the legendary watering hole, Pest district VII mayor György Hunvald said it signified a 'turning point' for the district.
Those with an interest in architecture, Hungarian history or literary coffee houses can sit, sip a coffee in the legendary kávéház (coffee house) and admire the sensitive restoration work on the ceiling murals, and the freshly gilded marble columns of the historic coffee house.
The ceiling tableaux, depicting muses, have been carefully restored to their former glory while respecting the original colours and technology of the period. In the ‘ladies room’ the gilding of the stucco is a sight worth powdering one's nose for.
The gorgeous 112-year-old building, which was a legendary meeting place for the Pest artistic world, later functioned as a sports equipment shop and an Ibusz office.
The investors, the Italian Boscolo group hoped to recreate the turn-of-the-century ambience with a luxury, five-star, 180-room hotel and coffee house.
The new building occupies the site of New York Palace and the demolished former Athenaeum Nyomda (Printing House) on Osvát utca behind the New York Palace.
At the turn of the last century, Budapest was known as the ‘City of 500 Cafes’One of the grandest of these was the New York Kávéház (Coffee House) standing at Erzsébet körút 9-11, near Blaha Lujza tér in the heart of Pest.
The New York Palace was built in 1894, to plans by Alajos Hauszmann, as a showcase for the New York Insurance Company. The Gresham Palace (soon to open as the Four Seasons Gresham Palace) and the Adria Palace (now Le Meridian Budapest Hotel) were also built for insurance companies.
It's interesting how the dullest jobs get the most gorgeous locations.
The building was designed by Alajos Hauszmann, and built by Flóris Korb and Kálmán Giergl in an Italian Renaissance style with eclectic ornate elements.
The frescos in the corridors and rooms were created by Gusztáv Magyar-Mannheimer, Ferenc Eisenhut and the celebrated artist Károly Lotz.Locals were struck by the interior’s resemblance to the Bayern King Lajos II’s palace.
Inside were the insurance company’s offices (their motto at the end of the 19th century was ‘the best of everything’), and the ground floor was rented out as the New York Cafe.
The New York was concocted in a spectacular melange of styles with curly gilded marble columns, bronze details, colourful murals and ornate chandeliers.
It immediately attracted Budapest’s literary society; authors, poets, journalists, intellectuals and Bohemians all filled its tables.
The artists and intellectuals would sit at their appointed alcove tables while visitors were relegated to the ‘deep end’ (the mélyvíz), a lower floor surrounded by galleries on the ground floor, thus resembling an indoor swimming pool.
Impoverished writers could linger all day over the special ‘writers’ dish’ a bargain-priced plate of bread, cheese and salami. Regulars were even provided with pens, paper and unlimited ‘fekete leves’ (‘black soup’ the local term for coffee) and spend entire days within the inspirational walls, ruminating over a manuscript.
The maitre d’ during the period, Gyula Reisz, known to all as the ‘literary head waiter’ gave endless credit for his select literary guests.
Like Gyôzô Mészáros at the Centrál Coffee House in Pest's district V, he was not a great businessman, but he earned his place in Hungarian literary history.
Dr Miksa Arányi was the Hungarian representative of the New York Insurance Company. The first leaser of the coffee house was Sándor Steuer, who was a member of a large cafe house family dynasty.
The grand opening was held on October 23, 1894 in time for the excitement of the Millennium celebrations in 1896.The coffee house’s literary scene really blossomed when the Harsányi brothers took over the management.
Lajos Nagy remembered the literary atmosphere in his work ‘Budapest nagykávéház’. He wrote, “There are some guests who do their books here, some who write verse, some sell their books, look for a job or churn out articles”.
It must have been pleasant to while away the afternoon in the spacious rooms, among the curly columns, winding staircases, and statues.
There were two game rooms, one decorated in Rococo style, the other in Renaissance. The gigantic glass separating walls were painted by Gedeon Walther in different styles; with Japanese, Turkish, Baroque, Pompeii and Renaissance elements.
The tables and chairs were bronze and the game rooms’ furniture was made from wood. The tasteful light fittings were a special attraction and unique to the New York.
The New York can be considered the birthplace of modern Hungarian literature. Almost immediately after opening in 1894, the Pesti Napló editorial moved in.
Writers Sándor Bródy, Endre Nagy and Simon Kemény set up their regular tables alongside luminaries from the film world, including the young Sándor Korda and his associates.
Actors, journalists and aspiring writers all gathered to soak up the atmosphere and browse through the impressive collection of some 400 periodicals and papers which arrived regularly.In 1908, the legendary literary journal ‘Nyugat’ set up home here, and Magyar Hírlap also operated from one of the offices on the floors above.
Regular visitors were Kálmán Mikszáth, Endre Ady, Gyula Krúdy.Zsigmond Móricz came here to seek out the editor of Nyugat, Ernő Osvát, always to be found at his table in the gallery.
Dezső Kosztolányi even immortalised the literary venue in a poem, which began,

“Newyork, you are the coffee house,
where I sat so often,
Let me open your door,
and maybe I can sit down for a while,
Just like a beggar who rests on a bench,
And look around at what remains within me and all around...”

Ferenc Molnár wrote most of his great work ‘Liliom’ here.
Soon after the coffee house opened, legend states that Molnár hurled the main door key to the New York Café into the Danube saying that it should never close.
However, one day it was forced to close for renovations. The cafe flourished until the First World War, enjoyed a brief revival in the thirties, and then went into decline.
It suffered significant bomb damage during the Second World War and was ignominiously rammed by a Russian tank during the 1956 Uprising. In the 1950s, the New York was turned into a sports equipment shop and an Ibusz office, then, after closing in the late 1990’s, its blackened exterior was shrouded in protective sheets and wooden scaffolding for years, with only the spire soaring unhindered skywards.
During the Socialist period, the café was renamed the Hungária kávéház, and was famous for the slowest and most surly staff in town.
Now it sits on the regenerating Nagykörút (Grand Boulevard), just along from the newly-refurbished Corinthia Grand Royal Hotel, and urges the progress of the great revival.

New York Palace Kávéház (and hotel)
Budapest - District VII
Erzsébet körút 9-11
Getting there: Metro 2 (red line), tram 4, 6 to Blaha Lujza tér
Tel (+36 1) 886-6111
New York Palace website

The Death of the Presszó

Digital photos ©LucyMallows2007

The Death of the Presszó

By Lucy Mallows ©1997


The presszó or eszpresszó occupies a mysterious limbo link in the types of hostelries in Budapest.
It is a step up from the rough and ready borozó (wine bar, but nothing like a brasserie, this is a dingy, mouldy cellar where cheap rot gut wine is ladled from a metal drum for around 30 forints a shot) or sörözô (beer hall), haunts of men drinking on their own, alcoholics talking to themselves, where women on their own are considered of easy virtue or desperate for a drink.

The eszpresszó hovers between the borozó/sörözô and the more upmarket cukrászda - coffee house, where solitary readers sip a cappuccino; a group of tourists pore over their guide books and soak up the traditional atmosphere. or friends gather for a Sunday afternoon chat.

The eszpresszó is more the local of the working class, ladies in groups eating cakes, gangs of workmen playing dominoes and eating somlói galuska, chocolate and cream pudding with their beer and young teenagers enjoying a moderately priced cappuccino.

However the eszpresszó is an endangered species.
The Fény (Light) presszó on Margit körút has been gutted by workmen and is now a pawn brokers, trading in jewellery.
It used to have one of the first juke boxes in Buda.
One by one, they gradually close as the rent soars and the fast food chains buy up all the best-situated premises.
The style of the presszó is socialist brown.
Outside, there is almost always a neon sign offering such unique - and socially inspiring - names as Terv -the (five year) Plan, Béke –Peace, Haladás –Progress and even the incongruous but somehow strangely comforting Májas -Liver Sausage.

Inside a typical presszó, a washable stone floor is usually adorned with a crazy paving style mosaic or beige linoleum, net curtains, little yellow, brown and green tiling on the walls, fake red leather seats or little gnome stools.
The waitresses still wear the long, white lace up boots with cut away heels and toes.
These look strange but give much support during the long hours of standing.
The standing helps contribute to the attitude which is almost always one of disdain or lethargic surliness.
To be a proper old-style presszo, it must have the original neon squirly writing outside, with a few of the letters hanging off, or missing entirely.
Check out the Alkotás (Creation) or the Pingvin söröző on Bocskai út in the eleventh district.
If the cukrászda is the coffee house, the eszpresszó is more the coffee bar.
The eszpresszó is more homely, friendly, less imposing than the cukrászda whose tradition of writers, poets and now tourists frightens off the locals.
Budapest was once the city of eszpresszó bars. 
In 1937, the Quick in Vigadó utca was the first coffee bar to open; its premises was planned and created by interior and industrial designers. The building is an office now.
From the 1930’s one eszpresszó opened after another and by 1950 many new ones joined the already established café's: The Mocca, American, Parisien, Joker, Intim and the Darling.
After 1956, the social realist architecture began to wane and a younger, fresher generation of enthusiastic interior decorators was given a free hand in the planning of public catering.
Shops reduced to rubble during the uprising were rebuilt in the modern style.
There was a craze for neon, both inside and out.
The trend to use English names gradually died out, in neon lights above the new revolutionary eszpresszós displayed radical slogans - Plan, Prosperity and Spartacus.
The post war eszpresszós still exist, the 1950s style is harder to find.
The red and green neon lights are now fading, some switched off forever, the Traubi (grape) and Márka (cherry) soft drinks are hard to find, the Bambi pop has disappeared, the wheels of progress grind on.
At the Kisposta eszpresszó by Moszkva tér, Friday night is party night, an old guy plays the Casio organ, with built-in drum machine and customers dance when the mood takes them.
The waitress continually arranges the heavy greeny-grey swivel chairs and tells off customers who push them out of line.
The Kisposta is full of elderly couples enjoying the old time songs, singing along, looking wistful and drinking brandy. Romanian and Russian young men, workers from Moszkva tér spend their daily wage on beer.
I say to my companion, ‘I wish a handsome Russian man would ask me to dance,’ and two seconds later one does.
Alexei dances with almost everyone in the bar, even waltzing with a old lady from the cake-eating table.
Alas the Kisposta is now a savings bank, gone the way of so many wonderful presszós, disappearing faster than a Siberian tiger.
The very popular Bambi Eszpresszó on Frankel Leó utca’s semi-pedestrian streets serves ‘warm sandwiches’, omelettes, cakes and coffee.
Also on offer is ‘Soviet’ champagne for only 480 forints a bottle and.
Kadarka red wine, a bargain at 27 forints a deciliter.
The Bambi has one of the few interiors dating back to the sixties, that remain untouched, a fairy tale ceramic city adorns the walls.
Old men play dominoes on a Sunday afternoon, sitting on red leatherette seats.
The mosaic floor has geometric box shapes in yellow, green and brown. 
The Sziget cukrászda is a presszó and cukrászda in one.
It has a varying prices scheme for those who stand at the tables in the presszó part, marked pointedly ‘II osztály’ -second class or move through the heavy plum-colored velvet curtains into the more chi-chi inner sanctum.
At the Sziget you can taste one of the best chestnut purees in town - little brown worms of nutty sweetness covered in whipped cream. The waitresses keep up the aloof grumpiness, required for the job.
The Sziget is now the Europa Coffee House, an anal Austrian style upmarket cafe, with waitresses in push up bras and peasant outfits, a la Mozart (formerly the wonderful Palma on the Nagy Körút).
Nádor utca, the street of philanthropists and learning boasts two presszós.
The Terv Eszpresszó or (five year) Plan has been smartened up recently with white paint and shiny lamps, it almost has pretensions to being a cukrászda, were it not for the clientele, working men in pairs, drinking beer and spirits in the morning, and, of course, the linoleum is still beige and dog-eared. 
The Tulipán, belonging to the group of fifth district flower-christened presszós, the Ibolya (Violet) student favorite on Ferenciek tere and the Muskátli (Geranium) tourist trap on Váci utca.
The outside of the Tulipán is misleading, the white plastic chairs and navy umbrellas give a Mediterranean terrace café feel, but move inside and the back room has a stark, naked beauty.
The gnome high stools surround little mushroom tables and the walls have turned beige from Sopianae cigarette smoke. 
Outside the Mignon eszpresszó, a neon sign at night reveals a girl with a sixties bob about to nibble on a tasty morsel, a mini cabbage roll or one of those little pink cakes bought by the deka.
The eszpresszó occupies a space on that strange incongruous row of one story shops on Károly körút, that have surprisingly still survived the bulldozer of town-planning progress.
On a personal note, the Mignon was the first establishment I entered in Hungary in 1984, coming off the metro from Keleti palyaudvar to Deák tér.
A man sat in the corner playing a Casio organ and the atmosphere was like a wedding party in Transylvania.
Old bácsis danced with little girls, nénis danced together, everyone was off their heads on cheap wine and lethal pálinka. The air was almost impenetrable with the thick white fog of Munkás (worker) cigarettes.
It was heaven.
The Mignon is still very brown and gloomy even during the day. Gloom is important so that artists can compose and drinkers can drink in peace.
The only light comes from a fruit machine which flashes garishly where once the band played. 
The Majakovskij on Király utca has a huge Eszpresszó sign and placards in the windows offering coffee, cakes, soft drinks and ice cream. Enter the bar and you step back in time, two very brown rooms are decorated by pictures of alpine scenes and a five-pronged brown wood fan hangs immobile from the smoke-stained ceiling.
Bright red Christmas lights line the top of the bar and the radio plays ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale.’
Király utca was also called Majakovskij utca after the Soviet Constructivist poet until 1990, and the presszó attracted those of an artistic inclination.
The dour waiter in a black cardigan could be one of the original poets. 
The Mester eszpresszó on Mester utca, the street of craftsmen and artisans, is announced by wonderful tableau signs.
This is a real eszpresszó with wood paneling and old linoleum.
Groups of men sit, drinking fröccs in the afternoon and bustling waitresses take no nonsense from behind the huge sixties counter. The bar is crowded with loud, bright fruit machines and a gigantic beige ceramic stove takes up half the floor.
Whereas the borozó is often the haunt of the solitary drinker, the presszó is much more communal and sociable. 
The Tik Tak on Böszörményi út has a sweet neon cuckoo clock above the doorway.
Refined, silver-haired gentlefolk of the vicinity use to drop in for coffee an cognac.
A piano once stood on a platform at the back and lamps with parchment shades gave an atmosphere of old Hungarian films. Böszörményi út is almost a museum street itself with many of the old neon signs still remaining.
Nearby, the Májas - Liver sausage calls itself a vendéglô now and offers food, but the peppermint green exterior, neon Májas sign and crazy paving stone floor are definitely ‘Espresszó-land’.
There are a few too many coke signs in the window but the whole presszó is redeemed by the wonderful walls inside.
The knobbly walls are like the inside of a sixties recording studio and help the conversation on horse-betting, the lottó and the fortunes or misfortunes of Fradi, to reverberate around the room, increasing in volume and urgency.
After a few pálinkas, you half-close your eyes, drift off and move back in time.
You can imagine Mária Gardonyi (from the heavenly Palma -now revamped as the Mozart) is playing the piano and couples are dancing cheek to cheek while others hum along to the favorites tunes, documenting a more gentle graceful time.
In his homage to the coffee-house, Ferenc Bodor wrote, ‘In the present depopulated, impoverished hamburgerized realm of catering, hostile to customers, those more advanced in years recall the smoke-filled cafés with their yellowed silk lampshades and tinkling pianos with wistful nostalgia.
Coffee houses and cafés have had their day, in present-day Budapest at least.’


Where to sip presszó coffee and pear pálinka, once....long ago.....in presszó land

UPDATE - this article dates from the late 1990s. Many have now disappeared, gone forever.

Please let me know if you have any news on some of these national treasures, listed below:


1. Kisposta - XII. Krisztina krt 2/4 GONE, NOW SAVINGS BANK, sob

2. Bambi - II. Frankel Leó út 2/4

3. Sziget - V. Szent István krt 7 GONE, NOW the vile 'theme-café' EUROPA CUKRÁSZDA, waitresses in costume

4. Terv - V. Nádor utca 19

5. Tulipán - V. Nádor utca 32

6. Mignon - V. Károly krt 28 GONE – the entire parade has been demolished, a gem is lost forever

7. Majakovskij - VII. Király utca 103 NOW THE INNOCUOUS ‘MAYA’

8. Mester - IX. Mester utca 45, still pretty rough at last glance

9. Tik-Tak - XII. Böszörményi út 17/c, with the wonderful clock on the facade

10. Májas - XII. Tartsay Vilmos utca 21 GONE, NOW ‘ARCADE BISTRO’

11. Naná - V. Királyi Pál utca, very dusty and gloomy but with an 'Another Way' [Egymásra nézve] ambience.

12. Híd cukrászda - IX. Ferenc krt by Mester utca...on the way out

13. No 1. - V. Sas utca

14. Ibolya - V. Ferenciek tere

15. Akadémia - üllõi út opposite med school

16. Gourmand – now the Gourmand Sports Bar (flagging fast)

17. Alkotás – XII Alkotás út - DERELICT

18. Szonáta - XI Bartok Béla út is now Wang’s Chinese Food. It used to be the place where the Magyar Narancs editors gathered to drink beer and play on the solitary pinball machine.
19. Grinzingi borozó – Irányi út, foofed up a bit lately, and not the same dowdy, dusty and very smoky atmosphere…prices went up, students and alcies moved out

20. Angelika - Batthyány tér - renovated, original furnishings dumped, gone are the ladies in hats eating cake, in come techno teenies and horrible loud music. Atmosphere annihilated.