What a heatwave! Hiding from the sun, this week we were trying to find the best lemonades of the city. Lemon juice, soda and sugar, the original reccipe can be found everywhere. We were trying to find those places where you can taste something extraordinary. That's how we got to GODOT Café and Comedy-theatre, Govinda Vegetarian Corner, Menza restaurant, Melba hajós Restaurant and Harbor, Paris-Budapest Bar and Mák Bistro. We drank 'em, cooled ourselves, made photos and now we write it! Follow us on facebook and you may win some lemonades as well!
Photo: Menshealth.hu
Menza Étterem és Kávézó
1/5
Everybody knows our best friend at Liszt Ferenc Sq, where you can always have a good lunch or a nice drink. Their waiters are as fast as our moms in the kitchen and put the selected lemonade in front of us with the same dynamism. This time we chose the green apple version – sorry strawberries, see you some other time! We could swallow green apple bites with the straw from these giant IKEA-glasses that can be found anywhere in the city, feeling some sweet sourness. The icy beverage was a great choice, the freshness of green apple was very nice to feel, it’s worth a try!
Price: 890 HUF (5 dl)
GODOT Café – Sour Cherry, Raspberries, Elderberry, Forest fruits
2/5
Godot is well represented on the lemonade-palette with its various tastes of cooling beverages. The drink card lists around 10 lemonades with funny fantasy-names, such as Pink Panther, “Cheeeerry” or “Elderberrino”. The recipe seems to be easy: a LOT of frozen fruits, soda and of course different fruit syrups, sometimes accompanied by extra elderberry syrup. The glasses arrive impressively filled and in the biggest heat everyone starts drinking them like a lion devouring an antelope. Our favorite was the Bodzínó (elderberry).
Price: 450 HUF (3dl)
Paris Budapest Bar - Passion fruit – red paprika and ginger
3/5
Our trip to Paris Budapest Bar was a real carousing one, we tried six different lemonades here and luckily we could catch the bartender, Zoltan Toth as well who prepared his special offers. Paris Budapest also has a lemonade-card, where everyone can find interesting items from the classic tastes to the exclusive ones. If you think that you’ll have to apply for a loan after a trip to such a fancy hotel bar, you’re wrong! You can enjoy this luxurious atmosphere for 1000 HUF, like a hundred more than any bar at Liszt Ferenc Sq. We tasted elderberry, raspberry, strawberry, cucumber-pear, passion fruit-red paprika and ginger-lemon grass lemonades. The pictures are misleading, normal lemonades arrive in much bigger glasses, we were only tasting. The bar was really amazing! The elderberry was the perfect combination of sweet and sour, the strawberry arrived with a touch of vanilla and the paprika made passion fruit as refreshing if it included alcohol. A real must!
Price: 1000 HUF (2,4 dl)
Address: 1051 Budapest, Széchenyi István tér 2.
Melba Restaurant - Melba lemonade, Rosewater lemonade
4/5
Melba Restaurant and yacht harbor is located right next to the Marina Bay, a 20 minute drive from the city center. The view of the Danube with kayaking and yachting youngsters provides a very calming view in the buzzing city. The Melba lemonade can be sweet-lovers’ favorite. It contains fresh orange juice, lime, passion fruit and soda. All tastes are well recognizable, the proportions are perfect. It is refreshingly cold, but fortunately not due to predominating ice cubes, and the dressing makes it even more desirable. In the other glass the tasty combination of rosewater and lime saves our day: must-try in this kind of heat wave! Rosewater was a little oppressed by the lime but that wasn’t such a big problem, we liked it that way! The visual experience was also perfect: the light pink and green filled the glass beautifully with a moderate amount of ice-cubes.
Price: 700 – 800 HUF (3dl)
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Address: 1138 Budapest, Meder Street 8.
MÁK Bistro
5/5
The “lemonade” of Mák Bistro is a little out of line. Of course not by its quality – as it was perfect – but by the fact that actually it is not a real lemonade. Here we tasted mint and basil-syrup with a slice of lemon. We were coming for the basil, but till we waited for the freshly squeezed syrup, we tried the one with the mint. Coming from almost 40 degrees outside, we felt like arriving at an oasis. The indescribably fresh taste was magical and it pleased us, tired guest in a cool way. After having been relaxed by the mint, the basil-syrup arrived. In the glass it was almost identical to the mint-version, but the taste was totally different. The first gulp activated the “Italian side” of my tongue, but later the dominant sweet taste also unfolded. If you choose Mák Bistro, we recommend the mint-syrup, as the best refreshing beverage, not only for the taste but also for the price. The best value among the listed places!
Price: 500 HUF