The Delivery: Pho Bo Vietnamese beef & noodle soup (Ft 840); Phad Thai fried prawn rice noodles (Ft 1,440); Brownie (Ft 380).
From: Tuk-Tuk, via Netpincér.hu
The Lowdown: While the delivery options available to Budapest couch potatoes and office drones have recently been growing faster than an Asian boomtown, getting good Asian - especially non-Chinese Asian - brought to your door has remained difficult. Imagine our excitement, then, when we fired up the Netpincér engine last week and Tuk-Tuk appeared on our screens. In a town where delivered Asian food ranges from barely edible to thoroughly unpalatable, this could only be a good thing.

And for the most part, it is. The Tuk-Tuk menu not only steers well clear of the Magyarized "Chinese" food found at most kínai gyorsbüfé, but shoots clear of China itself: in addition to a fairly comprehensive and authentic survey of Chinese cuisine, they branch out into Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, and Malaysian as well. Our hearts really got pumping when we spotted that greatest of all Southeast Asian comfort foods, Vietnamese Pho Bo, on the menu. No longer would we have to make the trek to Budapest's handful of far-flung Vietnamese eateries to eat the stuff! And so, we made with the clicking, our order wormed its way through the series of pipes, and we waited.

And waited. It turns out that the people behind Tuk-Tuk aren't kidding about the name: they imported two of the eponymous Asian deathtraps with which to shuttle their grub around town. We're guessing our lengthy wait was because of teething problems, or possibly your garden-variety Tuk-Tuk trouble. "Many more" Tuk-Tuks will be added to the fleet in 2007, so they're at least aware of the problem and working on it.

On to the food itself: after a thorough microwaving, it was very good. First up, the Pho Bo Vietnamese Soup:



This was the real deal with Bill McNeal, folks, only it was possibly the smallest Pho we've ever had. A serving of Pho is usually big enough to be a main course; this was more of an appetizer, if not an amuse-bouche. We emailed the proprietors of Tuk-Tuk about this, and they offered to introduce an óriási Pho Bo in January. Yes!

Next up, the Phad Thai:



Probably the best rendition of Phad Thai we've had in Budapest. It was a bit short on the shrimp, but aside from that it scratched us right where we itched. Best of all, it came in an old-timey white cardboard box!

And finally, the brownie:



It's not clear what this all-American delicacy is doing on their menu, but let it be said that this is far and away the best brownie we've had in years. It was oddly muffin-shaped, slightly crispy on the outside, fluffy and moist in the middle, and the centre yielded a liquid explosion of undercooked but still-warm brownie dough. Perfect.

As concepts go, Tuk-Tuk is long overdue in Budapest. Quality, home-delivered Asian food is so commonplace in other cities that its absence here was notable and saddening. Once Tuk-Tuk works out the kinks with delivery and the size of some of its portions, we hope they'll be around for some time to come.