Food in Hungary- Every Blog will not be about food

Food in Hungary- 

I promise every blog will not be about food! The next will be about the baths, which were the highlight of this country for us. So skip this if you don’t want to know about the food.

Our first few days we were not impressed by Hungarian food. Then we had a couple of outstanding meals. Two things stuck for me; pickled things and desserts. They have all kinds of pickles and sauerkraut is sold in big tubs in the supermarket and farmers markets. Its fresh, crunchy and good. So are the variety of pickles, pickled peppers, pickled onions, pickled cauliflower, picked things I don’t know what they were!

We did a lot of our own coooking shopping at Spar supermarkets. But in Eger there was a local market hall with good produce we did not see anywhere else like spinach, lots of fruit options and this:

Piles of chanterelles and other mushrooms, clearly foraged. We wished we knew more so we could buy more. We settled on chanterelles and made a great pasta dish with them.

And desserts were excellent. I think they were competing with Austria to have the best desserts, they compete with Austria since they were part of the Austrio- Hungarian empire. Especially good were sour cherry anything, pie, beer, pastry. Chesnut paste which I can’t even describe was amazing. Surprisingly nothing was too sweet, it was actually on the less sweet side. Chocolate cake with fresh berries and whipped cream, homemade gelatos, cake with cinnamon, sour cream and cottage cheese (I know sounds weird but it was good),panna cotta with raspberries. I even liked the sour cherry beer, and I never like beer. Some how I did not photo any dessert, maybe I was too busy eating them!

We had two out standing meals, one traditional Hungarian and one that was more international foodie-esque. Almost every desert was stunning. This is not an easy place to be vegetarian or vegan although it you try you can do it, Budapest had more options, like any big city. 

This is a Hungarian antipasto plate, notice lots of meats and cheeses.

This is the best traditional meal we had, maybe the best meal period. Wild boar with purple potato gnocchi, red cabbage, pickles and cucumber yogurt salad. First we had venison goulash and a white bean veggie soup, after panna cotta (lots of Italian influence in the cooking here) with fresh strawberries.

Our best meal in Budapest combined trading and international. Pictured in an Asian greens salad, cold sour cherry soup and bread. The other photo is buffalo mozzarella and tomato’s. Simple but so good!

There are also all kinds of snack and street food but they were mostly fried bread, and meat oriented or meat and potato oriented. Not our favorites. Now a few more market photos because I can’t resist: