Amid all the ongoing signs of distress and de-evolution in the local restaurant scene is one sign of potential progress. While strolling through District V a few weeks back we saw a sign on this storefront which said ITT! HAMAROSAN FRANCIA-OLASZ ÉTTEREM NYÍLIK, i.e. "a French-Italian restaurant is opening here!" There are several reasons this stokes our curiosity.

First, the street it is on (Vitkovics Mihály utca) may be the cutest in downtown Pest, at least this close to the very un-cute tourist district. Second, it is just a few doors down from the French-Hungarian Gerlóczy Kávéház, which itself is getting more homey and adorable by the day. Third, the space itself, while closed for some years now, used to host a spectacularly cute and eccentric little champagne bar that may have actually been called the "Champagne Bár." We once went there for a private party, and discovered that it had a cute little back courtyard that alarmingly but still charmingly reeked like cheese, courtesy of the also really cute T. Nagy Tamás Sajtkereskedése it backs up against.

So if this thing actually opens, we have the potential for a harmonic convergence of restaurant cuteness.

But even if it doesn't, the neighborhood is likely to get cuter soon, because just around the corner, the space that used to belong to the (you guessed it) cute but tragic little French-Italian Papageno restaurant is being turned into a "family-friendly" café, according to a guy we saw busy renovating the place, who was (yes, it's true) really friendly and cute. Awwwww!