Back on Monday we promised that we would soon be publishing “some seriously meaty restaurant news” about Kempinski Hotel Corvinus Budapest. Here it is: We’ve gotten confirmation from the hotel’s general manager, Marcus van der Wal, that a binding contract has indeed been signed to open an outlet of the international super-luxury Japanese restaurant Nobu on the hotel’s ground floor. While this alone is pretty meaty news, it’s even meatier when you consider that it comes at the same time that Budapest’s leading seafood restaurant has announced it is shutting down, due to a lack of local interest in high-end fish. In fact, you might even say it’s fishy!
The sad news about Óceán Bár and Grill, which we’d heard about a while back, was confirmed in an email sent out to the restaurant’s regulars last week:
After more than 6 years of bringing the best seafood to Budapest, Ocean bar & grill will be closing down permanently sometime between the end of May and mid June. The reason is simple really. While our many regular customers will be saddened to see the end to Ocean, unfortunately this city is still not quite ready for a quality seafood restaurant.
Adding to the sadness is the fact that the Óceán Delikátesz – the little fresh fish store attached to the restaurant – will also be closing, meaning no more pre-made tuna-Serrano ham roll-ups. And they say April is the cruelest month!
So the question is, if Budapest is still “not quite ready” for a quality seafood restaurant where diners usually escape for well less than Ft 20,000 (€70) a head, can it possibly be ready for a place that is likely to cost at least twice that?
As the outfitting of the mammoth (800 square meter) space Nobu is slated to move into as well as other set-up expenses will cost millions, obviously someone thinks so. (That someone is Hungarian-American film producer Andy Vajna, who is apparently shouldering most of the financial risk of the franchise.)
Of course, Vajna knows a lot more about business than us, and for sure we really want this to succeed, as it would really help put Budapest on the international culinary map. (There isn’t any other Nobu in Central Europe.) It would also give a nice boost to the Kempinski, who are working hard to up the local hotel food scene, and not really getting enough respect for their efforts.
Still, according to this recent article on the company, Nobu is hardly immune from the worldwide crisis afflicting high-end restaurants. And it’s hard to see how Budapest would be any different, even if the new outlet became a “destination restaurant” that actually drew new diners into the city.
Since the place isn’t scheduled to open until September or (more likely) October, everyone who is interested has plenty of time to chew over the question of whether it can possibly work. We even know of a nice seafood restaurant perfect for doing it, at least for the next few weeks.
You need a lot more reasonably well-heeled middle-class people (of which there are fewer in Hungary) to support a pricy seafood restaurant than stinking rich people (of which there are enough in Hungary what with all the tax-evasion and corruption)to make money off a high-end seafood restaurant. It’s as simple as that, I think.
Seafood looks disgusting, it stinks, and who knows where it’s coming from. What’s not to like?
The idea of opening Nobu in Bp is ridiculous. This is a vanity project of Vajna. It may for a while have a following among the Ferrari and Porsche crowd that now go to Deryne and formerly went to TG, but I can’t imagine it growing its customer base much more than that. It is great to go to Nobu in NY or London, but I can’t imagine the quality being maintained (if ever being realized)in Budapest. I totally don’t but the idea that Central Europe needs “celebrity” restaurants (like Gordon Ramsey in Prague). Instead, Budapest needs good, innovative Hungarian chefs looking to seriously develop local cuisine and taking advantage of local ingredients. Where is the Budapest version of Alice Waters? That I would happily pay for.
I give Nobu max 18-24 months.
Ocean is not even good at seafood, is just
expensive and over-estimated, it failed because it
sucked. Now you bring NOBU,which is twice as
expensive. Budapest doesn’t need more fancy -ass
restaurants for the bald retarded bodybuilder
wanna-be to spend their money in. What Budapest
needs is AN OUTSTANDING COSTUMER SERVICE TO
ATTRACT MORE DINERS, to improve the quality of its
work force in the extend variety of good places
already in business.does it make sense?
Nobu??? Ocean???
The real matter is: what will happen to the fishes in the aquariums?!?!
For sure they are fresh, so probabbly they will finish in the kitchen of Nobu…
… so, it’s time to update the “Top 33 restaurants” but in a serious way!!!
While I would gladly be a Nobu customer, the fact that it is at the Kempinski will drive me and many other potential customers away.
That building is an architectural disaster. I loathe it.
In fact, as I was walking by the Kempinski the other day, I thought to myself, ‘too bad the trees in the nearby park can’t grow any taller, so that they could hide the trite design features of that god-awful hotel. What the f*@k’s with those faux turrets anyway?’
Then, my inner monologue continued, ‘so much of the post-communist architecture in Budapest is not better than that of the communist era. They should go Ciacescu on the architects who design this stuff. That’ll learn them.’
In the end, I thought of raising Reagan from the dead, so he could say to the people, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that building’.
I’ll bet that Reagan wouldn’t eat at Nobu either, as long as it’s at the Kempinski.
Comment of the day. Thank you.
@Oshun: Dead right about the Kempinski architecture. József Finta has been gradually defacing Budapest for decades now. Look at any one of his buildings, most in prime locations and it’ll be more eyesore than a sight for sore eyes. To see how unpopular he is even with locals pick up his large architectural portfolio book in most of Budapest’s bookshops at bargain prices.
Does to the appetite what Rothko’s series of murals commissioned for Four Seasons restaurant (in the Seagram Building on Park Avenue, New York) were intended to do: “I accepted this assignment as a challenge, with strictly malicious intentions,” he said. “I hoped to paint something that will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room…”
delightful comments, really.
first, the architecture: what else would you expect from a fellow by the name of FINTA! it apparently applies to his taste as well.
another out of reach restaurant? well, why not. as for vajna, he can afford a vanity project (although i’d be much happier if he made me one of his projects). how often do any of us regularly eat at places like the four season, bock bistro, arany kaviar. deryne was good (except for the service) but even so.
it was simply time to change the landscape and that we shall have followed by brownpapered windows. 18-24 months? i think not, probably half that is my estimate…unless they have some serious money to launder.
@Oshun, klara, etc: Yeah, for sure Józsi Finta should be bricked up into a wall for his crimes against the Budapest cityscape. But seriously, this can’t be enough of a reason to avoid going to a restaurant if it’s otherwise top-rate. For me, I’ll go somewhere that looks horrible *on the inside* if the food and service are good enough. And you have to figure this is going to be pretty darn good, if painful in the price dept.
Vándorló,
Rothko’s fame proves that in XX(I). century real art is selling what you do as art.
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://www.fintastudio.hu/&hl=en
Just back in Budapest and look, the only fish restaurant in town (expensive or not) is gone.
Great comment by the owners by the way, and very useful too: “this city is still not quite ready for …”
Now cut and paste whatever you like at the end of the sentence, it will be true!!! It works like magic. BP (Hungary) is not ready for… Good food? Attentive service? Reasonably priced wines? Non stinking restaurants? Polite shopkeepers? You name it! After a while, though, this game becomes boring and you just want to leave this sad place on a nice plane. Then you realize that you just booked a wizzair flight and will be lucky not to be left stranded and/or abused. Oh my….
guys, if you are sad about oceán closing, why have you not supported it more? why has it not been on your top 33 list? why is there a café kör, a fülemüle, a kisbuda gyöngye or a chez daniel on your list? these restaurants are boring “out” places. they never would have gotten “in” in a normal city with a minimum set of gastro-culture… and now we wine that ocean shots down…
@r: Óceán *was* on the Chew Top 33, even back when it was the Pestiside Top 33, and even stayed on a few days after it closed.
When will the Budapest rstaurant scene get a clue? Here’s a novel idea….how about a modertely priced seafood restaurant that people will actually frequent? Budapest diners more and more have a choice of super expensive restaurants or super cheap (but great) csaladi restaurants with no one covering the middle.
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