Soup in winter is something like love during springtime: it warms our hearts and helps us survive. Since the first soup bars appeared in Budapest we haven’t thought of it as only an appetizer before Sunday lunch; soups can definitely be filling, and trendy with their well-designed paper cups. Welcome to the Budapest soup race.
Everything started here – LEVES.
Address: 1053 Budapest, Vámház krt. 14.
The first paper cups filled with soup started their quest here in LEVES (it means soup) to spread their smell throughout the city. The small soup bar has given the people of Budapest many impressive things like corn soup with thyme and African peanut-chicken soup (for more information about the menu visit their Facebook page). Good food is really a splendid reason to meet our friends here instead of a café and discuss the meaning of life, especially knowing that it costs roughly the same amount of money; in LEVES a cup of anything is 450 HUF and if we want additional content it’s an extra 50 HUF. The really hungry ones can order everything with a baguette for only 790 HUF. The only bad thing is that the place is quite small so its very unlikely that anyone can sit down, but this is what paper cups and plastic spoons are for: just grab your lunch and walk away.Interesting adaptations – Bors GastroBar
Address: 1075 Budapest, Kazinczy u. 10.
Fresh and carefully picked vegetables of the season and improved recipes are what Bors GastroBar is all about. Here the not-so–carefully-planned daily menu is totally random, it can be changed anytime but of course this is just another reason why it’s worth coming here; it’s a new experience ever time. Once you enter the bar you are destined to take an unknown path and try something totally new like soup-adaptations of common Hungarian meals, for example: paprika-potato soup, or calf-stew soup with sausages. In case of a rush of uncertainty, the Bors staff is right there to talk you into a new experience that you will most likely thank them later. A cup of soup is 450 HUF according to Bors’ pricelist and if you want a menu (containing a soup and a baguette sandwich) it costs 790 HUF. As an extra treat everyone should try their homemade syrups for drinks (320 HUF/4dl).Soup an ice cream bar – Fragola
Address: 1065 Budapest, Nagymező u. 7.
We are not sure what hot soup that we like in the winter and cold ice cream that makes us happy in the summer have to do with each other but we don’t even care as long as both are just the way we like them. Fragola is really good at both although we never dared to try eggplant cream soup with coconut ice cream, or tandoori chicken soup with banana-strawberry ice cream. Even if we had, probably we wouldn’t have any reason to complain; in Fragola everything is handmade so nothing contains any additives or any fake coloring. A for the prices: everything sells for 600 HUF here and we can choose a little bit of extra content for every cup of soup.Addictive Vietnamese soup – Quan Hoa Sen
Address: 1183 Budapest, Gyömrői út 79-83.
This place cannot really be called either a soup bar or a restaurant but here’s the thing: they make the best Vietnamese phở in Europe that probably would even make Hanoi rethink its recipes. The home made rice-pasta, the perfectly thin slices of beef; the lime, the chili and the vinegar are all that a hungry stomach can wish for. Many think that this soup is the best in the world, but even if we think they exaggerate, we have to admit that it’s undoubtedly addictive.
