When our "Top 33" list of Budapest restaurants was started by our sister site Pestiside.hu back in the fall of 2004, the idea was simply to publish a regularly-updated register of our favorite dining spots in the Hungarian capital. Not only did we generally not base our selections on the suggestions of our friends and people who wrote in, we often gleefully ignored the propositions or warnings that came our way. Because it was our list, and damned if we were going to follow the whims of others, as opposed to our own whims. Three years on, however, we've reached the point where it has become increasingly pointless for a few of us to even pretend to know better than the increasingly large number of educated "civilian" diners who make their feelings known through the comments on the individual directory pages of T33 members on Caboodle.hu, or by sending us outraged letters - complete with artwork like that above - explaining why a popular and usually patron-packed café/restaurant like Menza deserves to be pitched off the list either temporarily, or until the end of time.

The image above is of a bill sent to us recently by reader O.S., who had this to say:

[There] are some telltale signs of cracks appearing in the façade of what used to be a cracking place to go, if not entirely for the food: I have been there a couple of times since September, and this was the first time I saw [a tip being automatically] added on to the bill. I always tip well even when perhaps I shouldn't, and I'm there enough for them to know my face from old. We (2) were obviously expats, speaking in a mixture of English and Hungarian and enjoyed our time and the service was just fine. I went up to the cashier who preferred not to really understand and wasn't in the slightest bit empathetic, just took my card and swiped it. I told him everything was excellent and would probably tip more, but this left a bad taste in my mouth. I think if I do return it'll just be for cocktails (as they are excellent), at least they didn't incur "TIP charge" when I was there earlier in the week. What a shame they are joining the dark side like all the rest.

Unfortunately, it's not just O.S. who thinks Menza has become a force for evil. From reader D.M. we got the following email - with the subject header "Top 32" - just yesterday:

Do yourself and your website a favour and get the Menza off the Top 33 RIGHT NOW! It's dragging down the credibility of the list! I'm serious - I just went to the comments site on Caboodle to have a rant about my dining experience last Friday, only to find that all the terrible things I wanted to say about the place have already been said. Sometimes 2-3 times. The longer Menza stays on the list, the more the good name of the Top33 suffers.

And, sure enough, a quick perusal finds that most of the comments are indeed pretty harsh, such as this particularly pointed one from a certain János, posted back in June.

Seriously, Chew and Pestiside: this restaurant serves awful food, you must know it. All other places at your Top 33 are truly great, so why on earth have you included Menza? How much have they paid?

Just for the record, neither Menza nor any other restaurant that appears on the Top33 has ever paid us a filler to be there. Which is why we, unlike the keepers of most other "best of" dining lists in Hungary - have no problem booting off the ones that don't make the cut. And if we ever decide to change this policy, the folks over at Menza can expect to have an additional 10% put on their bill.