Quality by the slice – prime salami suppliers Venison Gusto unveil their own salumeria

Just the other side of Margaret Bridge on the Buda side, Margit körút 29 was built in Bauhaus style in 1936 by the former Trust Pension Association. With a marble-clad staircase and spacious, sunny apartments, hiding a huge inner garden, this was the kind of bourgeois luxury that perfectly met all the challenges of the age. 

Although its former glow looks a bit worn today from the street, it still feels apt for a premium salami boutique such as Venison Gustore, which has opened on the ground floor and evokes the world of an authentic Italian salumeria.

Gábor Ivánácz spent his childhood in the countryside. His father was a farmer, so he was aware of the differences between industrial and small-scale food production from an early age.

However, he was curious about the world, so he chose a surprising and unusual profession: butler to a wealthy Russian family. He flew with them on their jet, served them on their luxury yacht, travelled the world with them, diligently procuring ever more exclusive foods.


Having sampled half the world’s most premium products, when it came to smoked meats, he gradually came to the conclusion that they could not no longer ignore the creations of Hungarian small-batch producers.

After a while, he decided to start his own business – showing that domestic smoked goods, if made from top-quality raw ingredients, can stand shoulder to shoulder with the world’s best.


However, rather than leave the building blocks of his business to chance, he did not source from what was available on the Hungarian market, but decided to create his own brand. The goal was to make salami and sausage from the purest meat possible, using game alongside water buffalo and grey beef.

The range can be divided into two main parts: pork-free and pork-bacon products, including sausage, salami and bresaola. Pork-free smoked products include salami made from game, water buffalo or grey beef mixed with water buffalo tallow or grey beef tallow: 80% meat and 20% tallow is the basic recipe.

The main ingredients in the pork-bacon products are grey beef, wild boar, game or venison and/or water buffalo. Instead of tallow, premium belly bacon is responsible for the fat content, with a meat-fat ratio of 70-30%. The salamis are usually made in three flavours, traditional paprika, spicier and paprika-free versions.

The bresaola is also made from venison and wild boar hindquarters. You can buy the whole thing on the bone, but the price is a bit steep, as Venison Gusto has been supplying premium products to the fine-dining outlets of the Gresham Palace, the Kempinski and the Marriott hotels, as well as Michelin-starred and high-end restaurants, for some time, not to mention gourmet stores. Fortunately, soon you will be able to take home in a smaller sliced ​​packages of 200gr-300gr.

The store has a beautiful slicing machine but it’s only used for sampling – you can’t buy 50gr of salami, they just sell it whole. After smoking and maturing a salami of 416gr, it comes down to 250gr, which is not wholesale material, but then again you’re getting an awful lot of meat in that 100gr helping.


The cheapest is 1,900 forints, the most expensive, the venison, is 3,900. Actually, that’s pretty much average for Hungarian téliszalámi, the winter salami that is cured in cold air and smoked slowly.

While the store is a relative newcomer, the webshop has been operating now for seven years and delivering to various parts of Europe.


Gábor would like to test the market at home and not only in one of the city’s many delicatessens. This can be especially important for anyone who wants to know exactly which product they are buying – at Venison Gustore, these are not only available for tasting, there’s also a wide range of information about each item if you just happen to be passing.

Venison Gustore
District II. Margit körút 29
Open: Mon-Fri 10am-7pm, Sat 10am-2pm