Budget Budapest: Extremely Budget

There is a certain satisfaction to buying food in the same place where it is made. Generally, the fewer steps from its origin to your mouth makes for a fresher and less expensive experience. You can find just this in the form of Budapest’s butcher shops. The very lumpen butcher’s shop (hentes) is one of the last bastions of the extreme low-budget lunch, and one that couldn’t be less fashionable with hip young locals or even long-term expats. But the sausage you buy from the butcher’s, eaten standing up on the premises, represents one of the best lunch deals in town as well as an authentic Budapest experience.

Though they sell ribs, fried chicken, and other meaty items, the real reason to go your local butcher’s is the sausage. At most, you can choose from any number of varieties, among them: blood sausage, debreceni (spicy) sausage, lecsós (a bit spicier), and Hungary’s pride: liver sausage. (Take a gander at this old clip, from back in the day.)

Hungarians love their májas hurka like a fat kid loves cake. Recipes on the web vary, but all specify the use of pork liver, following the country tradition of the pig butchering (call it barbaric, but Hungarians villagers know how to make the most of that pig. Plus, every meat eater, once in their life, should see how their lunch is killed). Occasionally, other organ meats, such as pork heart, are ground with the liver, and spices, (usually lemon juice, garlic and marjoram), and mixed with rice before being stuffed in its deli casing and baked or broiled in lard or oil. Liver sausage is crumbly once freed of its casing, so I recommend a few slices of bread to keep it in order. For the more daring, there is blood sausage (véres hurka), which differs in that it is made with pig’s blood diluted with milk, black pepper and meat scraps.

Don’t expect much in the way of ‘service’ when eating in your local butcher’s. These are people who spend their days wielding sharp knives and chopping through bones in bloody smocks. They can be gruff, crude, solicitous, and curious, which – in a way – makes them no different from most of the wait-staff in finer eating establishments. For instance, the folks at Bazsik Hentes on Üllői were kind enough to take the time to recommend kovászos uborka as a traditional side for the liver sausage, though my camera provoked some derisive comments about “tourists.”

My favorite hentes, at 29 Mester utca, simply called Hús-Hentes Árú, served the meal on wax butchers’ wrapping paper, and was exceedingly patient with my choppy Hungarian. And the price? At Bazsik, liver sausage is Ft 130 per 10 dk. My entire lunch came to just Ft 480 (€2). A lecsós and a debreceni sausage on Mester, with pickles, bread and coke was just over Ft 500.

With the old-school interiors and bargain prices, it kind of makes me feel like I am back in the Budapest I moved to so long ago, and that is worth any price.