Backstage Repast: high-quality cuisine fuels the stars of Sziget

For this year’s Sziget Festival, the honor of providing catering services for all main-stage acts is granted to Budapest’s riverfront Kiosk restaurant – but this is no easy task, considering that approximately 800 high-quality meals must be provided to the bands and their entourages every day for an entire week. While much of the pre-cooking is done in the state-of-the-art culinary facilities at Kiosk before the food is continually transported to the festival island, a 30-square-meter field kitchen is also set up in the backstage area, complete with professional-caliber stoves, fryers, a sous-vide, a dishwasher, and much more.

Overseeing the entire operation is Kiosk Head Chef Gábor Orosz, the “general” in charge of approximately 120 workers between the Sziget kitchen and back at the restaurant, which continues to welcome the public throughout the festival’s duration. While Gábor can draw on extensive experience – including time working for Budapest’s Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace – the challenge of constantly providing epicurean sustenance for the Sziget headliners is unique in his career so far, and required many weeks of advance planning.

In collaboration with Budapest’s Michelin-starred Costes restaurant, Kiosk is providing breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and sumptuous snacks within a temporary dining tent that is tastefully decorated without being too fancy, an effect achieved with industrial panache by using wooden palettes to support the buffet, bar, and a hanging display of lush plants. Amid air-conditioned comfort and a well-stocked bar, the wooden tables are configured around an ever-changing smorgasbord of international cuisine, although Chef Gábor makes sure to include gourmet versions of traditional Hungarian specialties with each day’s selection.

So far the meals are generating overwhelmingly positive reactions from the musical luminaries hanging out backstage – in fact, the members of Tankcsapda (one of Hungary’s top heavy-metal bands) liked the food so much that they spent most of the entire afternoon and evening here before and after their Monday performance.

Surprisingly, many of the most hard-core musicians that perform at Sziget follow strict diets focused on healthy eating, so Kiosk strives to provide a diverse selection of delicious dishes that are light and nourishing. Some specialties being offered this week include baked paprika salad with sesame-coated chicken breast and sweet chili sauce, rosemary duck breast with steamed cabbage and pear compote, and the feta-cheese salad with mint, crispy lettuce, and marinated beetroot.

While Chef Gábor makes a point of providing diverse offers for the international crowd scattered about the backstage restaurant (including meals for vegans and food that is gluten- and lactose-free), he must always be prepared for special requests from the notoriously fickle celebrities. On Monday, the guys from Blink-182 asked for vegetarian sausages; these were not on the menu, but with some ingenuity and hummus, the crew could make it happen within minutes. Yesterday afternoon, Queens of the Stone Age needed a marzipan-laden cake to be the centerpiece of an impromptu birthday party held for the child of a band member, and once again Gábor and his team were able to make the rockers’ wish come true.

The backstage eatery is located alongside a sprawling terrace populated by international stars speaking in myriad languages, all amid a tasteful Mediterranean atmosphere of lounge seating and oleander flowers lined with changing rooms, an oxygen bar, and a gaming area complete with a pool table and video games.

All throughout the eatery and patio, TVs broadcast the main-stage action live; no audio is provided, but this isn’t really necessary since this tranquil locale is located within meters of the performance area’s blasting speakers and screaming crowds.

Also nearby lies the Sziget VIP area, a nautical-themed private playground for festival guests that want to party amid an upscale ambience, where Kiosk is providing a special menu including a savory lamb burger with beetroot mayonnaise (1,900 HUF) and homemade tagliatelle with forest-mushroom duck ragout served with parmesan slices (2,750 HUF); other Budapest restaurants offering VIP-section cuisine include Costes, Pastrami, and Tokio.

And although not every Sziget visitor can enjoy the refined dining available here or backstage, thanks to the work of Chef Gábor and his tireless Kiosk crew, anytime that we hear one of the main-stage stars start singing this week, we know that they’re performing with a full belly of fantastic fare.