My most recent forays into Pest's budget-priced underworld have all taken place in what is known as the "Palace District." And a royal blend it's been: from the vaguely schizophrenic (Archívum) to the medicinal (Jelen Bisztró) to the studiously hip (APA Cuka) and the mysterious (Keret). And now for the strangest of all.

The Italian-themed I Primi is stationed right in front of the check-out counters at the Kaisers supermarket in the Corvin Áruház at Blaha Lujza tér. The good news first: I Primi is open all night, and not in the non-stop-until-we-close mode of most 24-hour places in Budapest. And I suppose it is also good to have an alternative fast-food to your usual suspects. Now onto I Primi's failings. Settle back, grab an espresso, because there are many.

For starters: I Primi is an environmentalist's worst nightmare. By the time you have received your food, between the paper plates, plastic plate and bowl covers, paper cup and straw and other plastic utensils, you have collected enough refuse for your own starter landfill. It might be a sacrifice worth making if the food justified it: but this is actually my first experience writing for Chew where I left a meal unfinished. I ordered the tészta menu for Ft 1,249 (€5), which included the soup of the day, the pasta of my choice, and a soft drink.

It is ironic that the café sits within view of the vegetable section of Kaisers supermarket: the cream of broccoli soup (above) tasted like reconstituted Knorr instant soup packets you find deeper in the store topped with croutons that were pretty much just chewy nuggets of stale bread. The meat ravioli (second from top) fared a bit better. The pasta itself was fine: light and delicate, though inconsistently cooked. The meat filling, on the other hand, was fairly inedible. It would be hard to compare it with American pasta icon Chef Boyardee, because you can actually see the meat in the latter's canned offering. The mushroom sauce treated mushrooms as though they were precious truffles, but there was a light shaving of fungi visible in the heavy cream sauce.

It was Italian food: that would be hard to contest. But they also serve "Italian" in Italian prisons, in Italian school cafeterias, in Italian hospitals don't they? By the end of the meal I was looking longingly out the window at the line of homeless people waiting for the daily arrival of the Krishna's movable soup kitchen, with its offering of well-seasoned, thoughtfully prepared vegetarian food.

To be fair, I ate at the place rather soon after it first opened a few months ago, and maybe it has since upped its game, becoming a 24-hour version of the seemingly professional Vapiano. But that will probably take time, if not the 100,000 years it will take mother earth to "digest" all the plastic trash from my meal, including the parts that were supposedly edible.