A couple of hundred years ago in Southeast Asia fish was conserved and fermented in rice. When Japanese culture became popular, their well-known food also turned into a rockstar and a lot of new chapters were added to its oroginal story. The fact that most people look at it as a trendy fast-food filled us up with suspicion and curiousity. We decided to learn to eat with chopsticks and visit some of the sushi bars in Budapest.
1/9
Top quality, top price – Fuji
Even Asians would call Fuji authentic. Japanese people gladly visit this fancy restaurant at Rózsadomb where they always get a little discount. No surprise they like it here; some of the waiters don’t even speak Hungarian properly and the food is always fresh and traditional. As for those who are not familiar with Japanese culture, Fuji offers menus with illustrations to show what the strange makis and nigiris should look like, so nobody has to worry about them anymore.
2/9
Thanks for everything! – Arigato
Let’s imagine that we are in Tokyo. Its pouring with rain, it’s cold and we step inside an old restaurant that looks like a Mexican hot-dog stand. Welcome to Arigato. Here we get surprised twice: first when we look around and again when we eat the first sushi. Everything tastes great; the prices are relatively low, and surprisingly there’s no information at all about the place. The old couple who owns the restaurant really don’t care about trends, so they neither have a website nor a phone number. It doesn’t matter though. Home is where the heart is.
3/9
Cheap sushi? How? – Tokyo
There are not too many seas near Budapest so getting fresh ingredients for sushi is just as exciting as extreme sports. Well, Tokyo Restaurant doesn’t seem to be too reckless when it comes to shopping. Here you can eat from the conveyor belt as much as you can for only 3600 HUF but there’s no guarantee that the ingredients are not from TESCO or the local grocery store. The place tries very hard to look Japanese but it’s really hard to get in the mood seeing the forks and the non-Japanese staff. Of course, what we get here is still sushi, the quality is aceptable, but that’s it. If you want to eat Japanese food, turn around and keep looking.
4/9
Exclusive, modern, but still quite far from Japan – Kyoto
The soul of every sushi is rice. It has to be perfect if we don’t want it to crumble too soon (before we eat it). This is why in Japan, it’s not allowed to dip sushis’ ricy-side in the soy sauce. In Kyoto there’s nothing wrong with the quality of the rice and the other ingredients are quite good as well, however we just can’t confuse it with Fuji. This restaurant is modern, Asian-looking and the traditional Japanese and Thai foods have been redesign according to European needs. It’s worth eating here if you want to have a special night out with exotic meals and an attractive bar, but you have to go somewhere else if you feel like refreshing memories of your trip to Japan.
5/9
Classy and special – Nobu
In 2010 Nobu Matsuhisa, the famous chef, came to Budapest to show us the luxury that so many cities had seen before us. It was such a blast that even Andy Vajna and Robert De Niro showed up for the opening ceremony. Oh, by the way, De Niro is a co-owner of the restaurant chain if you haven’t heard yet, so you can imagine hard they blow their horns. But it’s okay because everything in Nobu is perfect; they work with the best ingredients, they are fast and elegant; every bite here is a real gastro-experience. And how much do we have to pay for all this? Well…a let's be honest: a lot!
6/9
We Love Budapest, We Love Sushi – I Love sushi
Pizza is still the most often delivered food, but sushi is quite popular as well. Eating with chopsticks at home is fun. You don’t need to follow any rules; you can play with the sticks, shovel food into your mouth, stick them into your sushi and point them at anyone. You can order sushi from almost every Japanese restaurant but I Love Sushi is different. You can only order from here, because they don’t have a restaurant. Skimming trough the menu, you can find lots of things to choose from: there are makis with cheese, vegetables, paté and if we want we can even get mayonese. The selection is not really traditional but in exchange everything is tasty and affordable. They even offer Bio Sushi for those who want to eat something healty.
7/9
Around the Globe – Planet Sushi
This Japanese-styled restaurant is more international than traditional. The whole chain is a part of a Russian franchise including T.G.I. Frday’s. Of course, this is not a problem because Planet Sushi is a quality place with a big selection and friendly prices. The design is simple but stylish and on the menu you can choose from more than 20 different kinds of makis with creamcheese, salmon or anything else; also there are California makis, unagi makis and a whole bunch of extremely attractive nigiri sushis. One of the good things about Plane Sushi is that they’re always offering something special for those who don’t want to pay a lot.
Cím: 1067 Budapest, Oktogon Square 3.
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8/9
You can run but you can’t hide – Okuyama no
We think that this restaurant should not be kept under the ground in a shopping center, however experts say that it’s not rare in Japan that the best places are hidden. Many people like , some of them even had the best sushis in this cozy, little place. Before coming to Budapest, the owner worked in Austria and later in Hilton as a chef, so surely we can trust him with food. What we get here is big, massive makis, a friendly environment, and proof that things are not always what they seem.
9/9
Just like in Japan – Bambuszliget
Of course, every sushi place intends to attract guests with special foods and Bambuszliget is not different either. However, besides all the traditional Japanese flavors here we can learn about eating habits and ingredients from Shoji Morita Sensei and his well-trained crew. Here we get the best possible service, the staff really cares about what we eat and besides traditional sushi they introduce us to a totally unknown side of Japanese cusine. If we ask the right questions we can benefit a lot from coming here.
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