Inside the Insane World of the Gresham Kávéház’s Ft 1,900 Espresso

When we last checked in on Budapest’s super-luxury coffee scene, our correspondent was bemoaning the demise of the Ft 800 latte “bargain” at the Four Seasons. Well, it turns out that even a Ft 1,500 latte served in the splendor of Budapest’s snazziest hotel may be something of a steal, because for true connoisseurs of high-brow brew the bar in Budapest has been set even higher, in the form of a Ft 1,900 (€7.50) espresso.

Not having the nerve (and barely having the money) to single-handedly tackle this towering pinnacle of coffee luxury, we headed over to the Gresham Kávéház with London-based author Daniel Young (up top and below), who was in town doing research for an upcoming book on the big world of the little bean. We then headed to the next-door kitchen of Páva, where we watched as the magical elixir was being prepared.

If you are wondering what goes into a single shot of coffee costing upwards of $10 with tip (and you’d be nuts not to) there seems to be two answers. One is the beans, which in this case come from the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, or wherever Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee comes from.

The second reason/excuse for that extra zero on your bill is that the handful of beans that go into each tiny cup are roasted in the 10 or so minutes between the time you order the thing, and when it is presented to you. Doing the roasting is a device around the size of a normal drip-coffee maker produced by an American firm called Hearthware, and which, according to one write-up of the gizmo, “cycles from fast to slow air speeds to adhere to the ideal roast profile which also provides consistency in the roast in varying environments (including voltage fluctuations and outdoor temperature) and to further randomize the bean path.” That’s got to be worth at least Ft 500, even without the extra randomizing of the bean path.

So what’s a Ft 1,900 espresso taste like? We’ll leave that to Young, who merely closed his eyes and pronounced it “gorgeous.” And that’s not even counting the two little biscuits you get along with your coffee, as well as the joy of knowing you were rich or crazy enough to order it.