If a remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was made, the new title might be changed to something like Charlie and the Macaron Factory. Surely enough, macarons are always round but variety still abounds: tomato-strawberry, chocolate-blue cheese, pumpkin, paprika, salmon, earl grey, candied chestnut, mint, viola, lavender and, of course, chocolate and vanilla, to name but a few among the multitude of flavors macarons exist in. But Charlie would be really extatic only if he visited Macaron Day 2012 in Budapest.
- What a queue! What’s going on here? Free bread? - Most of them are girls, it must be some kind of super-macho.
We caught this short conversation while standing in the winding line at U26. Passers-by were left wondering what it could’ve been that attracted so many people to Eiffel tér. And no, a handsome fella is not at all enough for a woman to stand in such a queue. Of course, it was some sweets, namely macaron, that lured so many people. And it wasn’t only women who got all excited by the light dessert of Italian and French roots. Young, old, man and woman, all took over the counters of macarons as a single mass of people at Macaron Day.
It’s hard to believe that there was a single person who could taste from the selection of every stand. First, because despite macarons being very delicious, the extensive consumption of them could easily result in overdose. Second, because not only getting in was a struggle in itself, getting near the stands was also something to achieve through physical prowess. The biggest challenge was to navigate through the crowds in front of Sugar! Design, Gresham Restaurant’s is our creamy-crispy special prize, Rózsavölgyi is the winner when it comes to the traditional chocolate flavor, LaDelizia was the best for overall scores and finally, we found Zazzi Cukrászda to be the most apt creator of unique flavors. What’s more important, though, is that there were no bad macarons.
Big applause to the amateurs who brought just as delicious macaron wonders to the sweet event as the professionals did. For, making macarons is not at all easy. If you’re flirting with the idea of entering the world of macaron artists, make sure to have some eggs, powdered sugar, granulated sugar, almond flour or ground almond and somebody to show you how to get all these to become macarons. And if you’re short of people to test the result, do call us, pretty pleeease.
