Not long ago, it was considered not only forbidden but downright outrageous to bring an animal into a Budapest restaurant or café. In recent years this seems to be changing as Hungary's capital experiences a proliferation of dog-friendly places, but Zoo Café takes feasts with beasts to the next level – here eaters encounter reptiles and four-legged furballs, while parrots fly overhead.
The recently opened Zoo Café is located about a five-minute walk from Kálvin Square, where you can really have coffee in the company of animals, or
just admire
them in their habitats through fencing or a piece of glass.
The first and foremost thing to do when we enter this miniature menagerie
is to close the door, because when new arrivals
appear, at least two
of the six free-roaming
cats
will come forward to greet the
guests, and will
happily slip through the door if they have the chance. Right in front of the entrance is the bar, where you can get coffees, teas, soft drinks, and grilled sandwiches, piadinas, cookies, or nachos. The menu
offers the regular things that you will find in any café of Budapest, but the food and drink
is not really the point here. What is important is what's going on in the three inner rooms.
After stepping over the cats that greet us, we met the other members of the feline flock (whom we can only pet when they want us to do so), who were jumping around on the logs attached to the walls, or playing with one of the toys scattered around the place. It is obvious at
first glance that the whole place is arranged to make it comfortable for the animals here. Looking around, we saw aquariums full of corals, fish, and crabs, alongside a hedgehog in a terrarium, a squirrel, a turtle, parrots frolicking in a bird playhouse, and a cockatoo.
Of course, we couldn't resist the temptation – we wanted to pet them
all. We were happy to find out that this is possible here; the ever-present
animal caretaker is happy to take any
creature
out of their protected places
and hand them
over to the enthusiastic guests, as long as they look out for each other's safety.
The first star of the place that we got to meet was the always-calm bearded dragon, who is as tough as Bruce Willis (we secretly named him Bruce). He was not at all bothered by our
holding, scratching, and talking to him, because he was mostly just calmly lying about (while one of the cats was playing with his tail). We found out that he lives with two of his companions in the café, he mostly likes to eat insects, and he inflates his body when he does not like something. This must be very frightening, but we have no idea how this can be achieved.
After getting past
a few cats attempting to chase a squirrel, we arrived to the Zoo Café
aviary, where the 13-year-old cockatoo greeted us with a "szia” and a "hogy vagy” (meaning "hello" and
"how are you”), before
kindly
expressing that we are beautiful. Its not important that after the introduction, he tried to take
every piece of jewelry and hat he could get near, so it was hard to get him back to his favorite resting place. We successfully escaped in the end.
Naturally this
was not enough for us yet, because we had to visit the chameleon, named Kázmér by the guests. He turned from gray to green in our hands, before falling over while
still holding on to our fingers and falling asleep. Allegedly he can also turn red and dark brown.
Many might think that the Disney-typo logo and the presence of nice
animals
makes Zoo Café
a place mostly aimed toward children, but based on our experience we must
say that is still entertaining to crawl on all fours after purring cats whether you are 3
or 30 years old, and it is also OK to take off your tie and put a snake in its place. However, what is really important is to respect each other's peace and health.
