January 27, 2013 - Budapest Guide

Last week I saw some articles on the web about Rob Longworth, a Canadian expat who has lived in Budapest since 1990 and who has a long experience in the restaurant and food business. Recently he opened a website named primecuts.hu and from that website you can order meat from Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada and the US.

Since Hungary has lots of poultry and pork Rob Longworth does not offer such meat on the webpage, but if you are interested in beef or lamb, then this might be interesting. The lack of consistency in the quality of Hungarian beef was the main reason for creating the webpage, and now you can get top quality t-bone steaks and other meet delivered at your door in Budapest.

Personally I do like meat and I am very happy if I get a good steak, but I am not so much of a judge to say whether a piece of meat is bad, middle class or super. Anyway I contacted Rob and ordered a large piece of Eye of Rump Beef Roast and a USDA T-Bone Steak. I was lucky because he had something ready to deliver, so within a few days I got the meat delivered and then it was time for a T-Bone steak at home in Budapest. The Eye of Rump Beef Roast was a large piece of meat so I thawed it, cut parts of it into small steaks and the rest I roasted. Since I am not at all a master of this I did not really know what to expect, but I can say that I was very satisfied with both the T-Bone steak, the Eye of Rump steak and as I roasted the other parts of the beef it was very tasty and nice.

I received some advices from some friends of mine who are meat lovers with experience on the subject of steaks and preparing meat, so maybe that helped me out, but at least I can say that I had some really nice meat for both lunch and dinner the last days and I enjoyed it a lot (and so did my family).

If you know more about meat than I do and would like to have some premium quality delivered at your door in Budapest, then head over to Prime Cuts and place your order today!

Last Saturday I went with my wife and son to Danube Palace to listen to what Dr. Robi Sonderegger had to tell about family life and the importance of it. It ended at 13.00 and we then walked to Central Bistro & Bar to grab a quick lunch before we went home (we told the waiter upon arrival that we wanted a quick lunch). Well, seldom has a lunch succeeded as bad as this one!

We sat down and asked for a chair to our soon two year old boy. Unfortunately the restaurant had no such thing, so he had to sit in a mix of our laps, run around and the trolley. Most restaurants at least have the cheap IKEA chairs for children, but these were all missing. We sat down, looked at the menu and decided to go for a steak and a hamburger. But, none were really interested, so we had to wait a long time before the waiter even came over to take our order (remember: quick?!). We placed our order around 13.30. Around 14.00 the waiter finally came with our lunch, or at last what was supposed to be our lunch. My hamburger was very well done, and the hamburger bread was black on both inside and outside. Not totally burned, but you could really feel the taste of coal as you ate it.

My wife ordered a well done steak. After thirty minutes of waiting the steak was served, but not at all well done. Parts of the steak were in fact raw. She was starving, our son was starving and so was I. We therefore ate the over fried hamburger with the burnt hamburger breads, while we sent the steak back to let them do some more work on it. After 10-15 more minutes it was returned, but still not well done at all. So, once again it was returned and after 10-15 more minutes it was served for the third time. This time it was well done, and the taste was in fact good together with the mushroom sauce it was served together with.

During lunch time on a Saturday Central Bistro & Bar was quite well visited. I am not sure if that was the problem, but there were only two waiters working and they might have had a lot to do. But, if a restaurant is not capable of receiving a half full restaurant during lunch time the result will be like with us… unhappy guests who will never return. And then again the next time the restaurant will not even be half full.

The price for the steak was about 3000 Forints while the price of the hamburger was a bit less than 2000 Forints. Our original plan was to eat some desserts as well, but at 14.45 we were so fed up and our boy was so tired that we just hurried and payed the bill and jumped in our car and drove home. Somehow the experience remained as one of our worst Saturday lunches in a very long time…

: It looks nice on the inside of Central Bistro and Bar

Central Bistro & Bar

Nador utca 13
Tel: +36 1 328 3460
Open: Monday – Sunday from 11.00-23.00

Day: January 27, 2013

T-Bone steak at home in Budapest

Central Bistro & Bar Budapest review

Central Bistro & Bar