Köles is the fruit the friendship of Rita Hadarik (author of a culinary blog) and dietitian Krisztina Juhász bore. They met at a cooking class in 2011, and their common passion for gastronomy inspired Köles, and brought a brand new restaurant-concept to Budapest.
Köles is determined to obey all the unwritten rules of a genuine gluten-free restaurant. The ingredients are fresh from A to Z, so in case chemicals and food additives freak you out, Köles will soothe your soul like an
old school love song on a stormy night.
The owners are definitely taking the high road with opening this place, because a gluten-free restaurant has to meet several strict criteria. First of all, the grain has to be gluten-free, and cannot be tainted by any type of pollution. The chef has to use different chopping blocks during the preparation of the gluten-free and the gluten-containing dishes. These are only two of the many rules, so making a gluten-free pie is not as easy as the proverbial pie. Nonetheless, Rita and Krisztina are on a mission, and Köles' opening could be a milestone in introducing a healthy and increasingly popular diet to Budapestians.
Köles - just like a canteen – only offers a narrow range of dishes, but the flavours won’t remind you of either high school lunches or any of Calvin’s slimy meals. The news about Köles travelled faster in Budapest than a neutrino in the Large Hadron Collider, so people are queuing every day at lunchtime in front of Köles to get their gluten-free meals.
The menu varies day to day, so don't be surprised if you come across dishes such as plum cream soup á la Provence, rice pudding with homemade peach jam, pumpkin cream soup with roasted pumpkin seeds, Transylvanian layered cabbage, roasted paprika filled with feta cheese; Rösti with linseed, or piquant yellow bean cream with caramelized onions.
A complete meal costs 1290-1490 HUF, soups start at 550 HUF, main courses lighten your wallet of 850 HUF, and the cakes cost at least 650 HUF. Ingredients originate from farmers’ markets and the best marketplaces, so the chefs have to keep their creative mojo flowing to come up with alternative solutions if a certain piece of the cooking puzzle is not available, which results in an ever-changing selection.
Regarding the plans for the near future, Rita and Krisztina aim to draw in as many customers as possible by, for instance, providing food for thought with exhibitions, and by setting up a delivery service ASAP.
UPDATE: The place ceased in the end of 2017.
