As we just said, enjoying the culinary delights of the Caucasus in Budapest sometimes requires a little imagination. Here is another example. A few weeks back we stopped in for lunch at the Arany Kaviár, with the hope that its well-known menu of Russian specialties would include a knock-out Caucasian meat dish. Scanning the menu, we saw Pork shashlik with grilled vegetables (Ft 3,500/€13) and, for a rather imperial Ft 5,500, grilled lamb medallions with grilled vegetables and adzhika (Georgian hot pepper sauce). Not really wanting either, we asked our waiter if there was anything not on the menu that might cure our Caucasian fixation, and he told us about an off-menu item that had us saying da! even before he finished.

What came out was the barány saslik (lamb skewer) pictured above. Apparently a specialty of the most Southern bit of Russia, it was composed of an entire rack of baby lamb chops driven through with a cute little broadsword, rather than the cubed or ground meat on a plain metal skewer that you usually get when ordering saslik in BP. Nestled on top of some potatoes and grilled veggies, it was accompanied by a medium-spicy sauce, and a large handful of raw red onions. At Ft 4,900, it was not cheap, but given that it was a custom order, and came in under the aforementioned lamb medallions, we couldn't complain. Then again, by the time the check came, they'd already taken away the sword. Give it a try.