One positive side of the current shutdown is that many restaurants in Budapest are offering to make Christmas dinner for you. Don’t bother with queuing in the supermarket and let some of the city’s best kitchens take care of all the cooking.
Fine dining at home
After its successful spring shutdown menu, Laurel has tailored another offer for this winter. Considering the high standard of the restaurant, they have again created a selection at friendly prices: the 4 + 2-course festive menu for two is 15,000 forints, for which you also receive a voucher to use once everything reopens once more. Their Silentium Xmas menu includes homemade smoked butter and sourdough bread, smoked trout, beef cheek and Christmas rum baba, with surprises to open and close your meal.
Michelin-recommended Stand25 hasn’t created a menu as such, but traditional and new-wave festive dishes: fish soup and stuffed cabbage, Scottish salmon fillet, French onion soup and various steaks. To order for Christmas itself, contact them by 21 December to pick up on 23 December, but their seasonal offer is available throughout Advent. Tamás and Szabina’s festive selection can be gift-wrapped. By the way, Stand25 has also created a New Year’s Eve offer, worth checking out later on its Facebook page. As with Laurel, Stand25 also provides a lovely finishing touch.
Another novelty this year is that you can take dinner home from The
Ritz-Carlton, Budapest. This downtown hotel offers a variety of packages,
including roast turkey stuffed with chestnuts and cranberry sauce, roast duck
stuffed with Hungarian cabbage pasta, roast goose stuffed with pumpkin sauce,
oven-baked porchetta and slow-cooked Uruguayan rib-eye. To extend the perfect holiday
further, you can order these packages until 1 January.
As on the traditional family
festive table, the package includes a main course with sauce, garnishes and desserts
of either homemade Hungarian bejgli or bűche de Noël prepared by confectioner István
Mázás. When you order, you also have the option to have your seasonal meal
delivered to several locations – the perfect solution for year-end corporate
events, large family gatherings or a Christmas dinner in style, even when we
are far apart. You can place your order with erno.kis-kiraly@ritzcarlton.com
or +36 1 429 5500. (x)
Traditional Christmas
The Szépilona Bistro, reopened this year, offers a real traditional Christmas spread – the full menu includes duck rillettes, fish soup, stuffed cabbage, guinea-fowl soup, duck leg and kuglóf cake. You can place your order up to 20 December and pick it up until December 23. The gems of Hungarian and Jewish cuisine can be ordered from Rosenstein for Christmas and the New Year. The traditional menu features a cold platter, fish soup, fish, stuffed cabbage, cholent stew, roast meat, classic garnishes and dessert.
The offer at Két Szerecsen also includes traditional dishes – goose-liver pâté, fish soup with or without innards, stuffed cabbage, fish, orange- or prune-flavoured duck leg, honey cream cake, layered flódni cake, and rum-and-cherry chocolate cake.
Anyone who is familiar with the Gyergyó Kisvendéglő knows that even at Christmas they still offer classic, homemade dishes: filleted carp soup, catfish – both with innards – breaded perch with mayonnaise potatoes, and stuffed cabbage.
The selection at Szaletly is tailored to several diners: the four-person package of fish soups can be ordered in the same way as the two-person oven-baked stuffed cabbage with ribs, and the two-person duck leg à l’orange with steamed cabbage and mashed potatoes. Leave room for the poppy or walnut bejgli cake for afters.
The Vendéglő a KisBíróhoz has another Christmas package this year, comprising Baja fish soup with matchstick pasta, cold duck liver, Makó-style stuffed cabbage, whole chicken stuffed with duck liver, as well as two types of bejgli and babka cake.
For top-quality home-style fish and classic Christmas dishes, Halkakas is also a good option this year, as they have fish soup with catfish or carp, stuffed cabbage with fish, and catfish paprika with cottage-cheese pasta.
Beyond fish soup and stuffed cabbage
As this Christmas is different in so many ways, now might be the time to try something new. It would be hard to list all of the Christmas offerings at Trattoria Pomo D’oro, but items include oven-pan lasagne, ossobuco and sea-fish stew.
At Byblos, lovers of eastern flavours can order their special Christmas offer. For 29,000 forints, you receive a complete menu with whole lamb shoulder, lamb sausage, four assorted meze, salad and dessert.
For flavours closer to home, still with Christmas in mind, take a look at the offer at Grumpy’s. You can also order oven-baked carp, chestnut-plum rolled chicken or rosemary lamb shank.
Bp BARbq may not have a special Christmas menu, but they do promise to deliver your requested meal between noon and 2pm on Christmas Eve. If you’re not in the mood for classic Christmas food, it’s good to know that you can order from their entire barbecue-focused menu, plus pork and beef brisket, as a minimum 1kg package excluding side dishes.
