Probably our most longstanding complaint about the Budapest dining scene is the appalling lack of high-quality “white-tablecloth” restaurants where one can eat good traditional Hungarian food at night. Because the “business lunch” menus commonly offered by area eateries tend to focus on Hungarian food, and generally offer great value, you can easily find memorable Magyar eats during the day. But come sundown, Budapest – and especially Pest – offers precious few rays of hope for discriminating diners in the mood for some classic Hungarian. Alas, the Pesti Lámpás Étterem (“Pesti Lamp Restaurant”), which recently opened on the south side of District V, doesn’t seem to be the little bit of sunshine we had hoped it might be.
The restaurant sits in the majestic Ybl Palota office building, and its tables spill into the attractive but unfortunately un-weatherized courtyard. The two-floor indoor dining area is attractive and airy, sort of a sleeker version of the Central Kávéház, which by coincidence sits just across the street. It was previously home a short-lived Zwack-themed restaurant; someone close to that deal said he considered it one of those “cursed” spaces that will never pan out.
Like many similar Hungarian/International restaurants, the Pesti Lámpás seems to have the business lunch menu drill down pat. They even post the menus online in advance, which allows us to see that today’s offering is a very Magyar raspberry soup followed by scalloped potatoes (Ft 1,090/€4.35). But on our recent lunch-time trip our team of three ordered from the regular menu, to see what you’d get if you were there for dinner.
Alas, the regular menu is heavy on the same sort of pointlessly fancy and overcomplicated “international” items of the sort that seem to be in vogue these days, at least with ambitious local restaurateurs. One example is the grilled chicken breast with wild mushrooms and chili-seasoned glass noodle (Ft 2,190) pictured up top. While the dish wasn’t terrible, the noodles were not of the transparent rice variety you’d expect, and, according to the person who ordered, were nearly impossible to eat with a fork and knife (“I was eating like a retard,” he said).
The more tradition-minded of our trio of tasters found the borjúpörkölt juhtúrós grízgaluskával (veal stew with sheep curd semolina dumplings; above, Ft 2,290) to be “lacking in pizzazz.” Similarly pizzazz-deprived was the steak version of the four prominently-featured “Ybl” sandwiches (Ft 1,690). Worse, the fries that accompanied it were damp and already cold by the time they arrived at our table.
To be fair, besides those sad fries nothing we tried was seriously bad, and the prices in general are not unreasonable. The most expensive item on the regular menu is a salmon steak with black spaghetti and zucchini in a cream sauce, at Ft 2,590, while the poppyseed cake with forest fruit preserve and candied orange peel (above) was quite tasty, and a relative bargain at Ft 450.
We won’t say the Pesti Lámpás is to be avoided. The room is nice, the service we had was perfectly serviceable, and the food quality/price ratio is above average for restaurants of this caliber in town. The thing is, it could be so much better, if only the owners recognized the great void in the local restaurants world – the lack of a top-notch, reasonably-priced Hungarian restaurant catering to evening diners – and focused on filling it.
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