With the summer tourist season in full swing, these should be great days for Budapest's restaurants, especially those catering to tourists and other higher-spending patrons. Alas, this does not seem to be the case for everyone. And if three examples makes a trend, there seems to be a trend of restaurant closings underway serious enough for us to match our category "tag" for recently-opened restaurants with one for those that have recently thrown in the towel.

The three that come to mind are the Grand Café Oktogon, La Fontaine (their darkened doors are pictured above) and the Les Amis Vendéglő (pictured left while still alive). We're not entirely sure that the Grand Café isn't actually closed for repairs, though if they are, they picked an awfully strange time to renovate. More certain is that the very French La Fontaine and the vaguely French Les Amis - the latter of which used to grace our "Top 33" list of fine Budapest restaurants - have both bitten the dust.

As for what was responsible for these three notable closures, our guess is three variants of the same theme (inability to turn a steady profit). In the case of the Café Oktogon, we're a little mystified, as the place did seem to do a pretty good business, though mostly catering to lots of patrons only having a coffee or drink. As for Les Amis, we'd say it was the location. While just down the hill from some of the capital's richest residents, it was almost totally inaccessible to the sort of foot traffic that even very high-end bistro-style restaurants rely on. Meanwhile, in our opinion the proprietor and Maitre d' of La Fontaine, Bernard Deleglise, was always one or two steps ahead of local restaurant price inflation. Which is a great shame, as the food was usually quite good, and the charm of the room only eclipsed by that of Bernard himself.

With commercial real estate in Budapest in as short supply as the reserve of would-be restaurateurs is inexhaustible, it's almost certain that each of these three spaces will soon be put back to use as eateries or cafés - and probably just as sure that within another year or so at least one will again be featured on this site under "recently-closed."