Health awareness and everything-free diets are all the rage in the restaurant business right now, but Budapest’s new Murok Café manages to be an eco-friendly establishment without joining the horde of paleo, vegan, and sugar-free places. Although the café is furnished with our grandmas’ cupboards, a door functioning as a table, and rustic tile patterns, the popular ruin-pub vibe isn’t present, so now we can fill our stomachs with all kinds of goodies at a rather unique place of an unspecified style, located at the junction of interweaving trams near the Buda side of Margaret Bridge.

As we step inside Murok Café and Snack Bar, the first unusual object to pique our interest on a plant-filled cupboard to the left is an aquaponics – a self-sufficient system that relies on biological symbiosis. In the bottom tank, goldfish live in relative darkness, thus avoiding the spread of algae in the aquarium. A tube leads the nutrient-rich water to the small clay balls above, from which the water, filtered and cleared, drips back into the fishes’ habitat. The seeds are planted between the spheres; the café’s three avocado trees and lemon-tree seedlings were grown with these special biological conditions, and the emerging sprouts are also edible and are served alongside the dishes.

As evidenced by this welcoming feature, Murok Café is one of the city’s Sustainable Restaurants, so those who visit can be sure that they won’t increase their environmental footprint much by doing so. The Heroes of Responsible Dining Foundation has strict requirements for those who wish to acquire this certification, in which selective waste collection and the use of recyclable materials are only the tip of the iceberg: in Murok, for example, we can sip on a mango-peach smoothie with a biodegradable paper straw.Another condition for this certification is that a certain proportion of the ingredients must be organic and Hungarian. In Murok, the free-range eggs are supplied by YouTyúk, and are made into various breakfast dishes, such as the döfromázs (French cheese omelet, 980 HUF), the Spanish omelet with onion rings (980 HUF), or the Breakfast of Champions (a toasted bagel filled with fried egg, cured ham slices, and cheese; 1,150 HUF). Murok even undertook a special mission regarding eggs: for example, they held a public egg test with Judit Boóc, the expert of the Responsible Dining Foundation, during which they conducted a blind test to see whether the difference between eggs laid by differently raised chickens is noticeable.

The artisanal meats are also from Hungarian farmers and used in various sandwiches, such as the Gray Gulya (ciabatta filled with Grey Cattle salami and sour cream, 950 HUF) or the Bambi (bagel with cattle salami, 950 HUF). All sandwiches come with a salad; we chose the Purple Rain (homemade red-onion chutney and blue-cheese mascarpone; 1,050 HUF).On Mondays and Wednesdays, the restaurant welcomes guests with hot soup. At the beginning of the week, this is usually meatless – at the time of our visit, it was a creamy mushroom soup. The various homemade pastes served with the snacks deserve special mention; the specialty at the time of our visit, white wine and rosemary duck rillettes with a bagel, proved to be an excellent breakfast, but they offer many other permanent versions, ranging from zacuscă to blue cheese and tuna cream. As an extra, we can order additional toppings for our dish, including various craft salamis, olives, and so on.

The lavender and elderberry syrups are homemade, as well as the salted caramel and gingerbread-cinnamon syrup put into the coffees and hot chocolates. Our favorites were the dairy-free smoothies: it’s easy to start the day with a green vitamin fusion with spinach, apple, and kiwi, or a Napsárga with mango and banana (780 HUF). A new variation is made with banana, oatmeal, honey, and milk – almost enough for a full breakfast. Murok has some drinks for the end of the day, as well, including craft beers, quality wines, cocktails, and a wide range of liquors.

Murok Café and Snack Bar
Address: Budapest 1023, Török Street 2
Opening hours:

Monday-Friday, 9am-midnight​​; Saturday, 10am-midnight; Sunday, 10am-10pm
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