Two Great Food Sins that Taste Great Together

While around the word, animal rights activists are doing their best to ban foie gras, and never miss a chance to guilt people for eating veal, they aren’t making much headway in Hungary. Or at least not at Kiskakukk Étterem in Budapest’s District XIII, where among the items on the mostly traditional Magyar menu is one seemingly designed to outrage foes of alleged food insensivity: Borjúszűz libamájjal töltve konyak mártással sült zöldségekkel és házi krokettel, a.k.a. Tenderloin of veal stuffed with goose liver in cognac sauce served with baked vegetables and homemade croquettes. Oh, the humanity!

So what does this one-way ticket to social ostracism cost, and is it worth it? The first question is easy: Ft 2,990. As for the second, we’re not so sure. The meat was not nearly as pink and lovely-looking in person as in the pic, and the libamáj (that would be the liver) clearly second-grade, or worse. (The veggies, however, were excellent, and both the sauce and the mashed potato croquettes better than decent.) All that said, €10.85 doesn’t seem like a lot when you consider that the dish features two of the most expensive meat ingredients out there – not to mention the satisfaction of getting to break the world’s two most fashionable culinary taboos in the same bite.