Is the New York Cafe in Budapest the most beautiful cafe in the world?
While wandering around the city, we heard that the New York Cafe in Budapest is the most beautiful cafe in the world. We don’t know who gives out these titles, but after hearing it many times we were intrigued enough to go. It’s one of the stops on the Hop-On Hop-Off bus tour we took (Most efficient option for people with no sense of direction who would otherwise waste hours looking for their destination, or end up taking taxis).
More beautiful than Caffe Florian in Venice? we thought. What nerve. (Just because our name was invented for The Merchant of Venice, we think we’re linked to Venice haha.)
Then we shut up because holy crap, this is what greeted us.
It’s two centuries younger than Florian, but it’s vast, light and airy and holy crap, those walls and ceilings. Built in the 1900s, it was recently renovated. At one point it was the world’s most beautiful warehouse.
In the early 20th C its regulars included the writers Gyula Krudy and Deszo Kosztolanyi (Thank you, NYRB Classics, or we would never have read them), and the filmmakers Alexander Korda and Michael Curtiz (Casablanca).
For our very late lunch we had a latte macchiato and a spaghetti with a very rich beef sauce that made dinner redundant. We like Hungarian home cooking. How you feel about it depends on how you like goulash (like a soupy mechado) and paprika, and we love the stuff. It’s so filling, you have to walk across Budapest to digest it.
So you dine under a fresco, and the cost of spaghetti and coffee: 6,370 Hungarian forints, or PHP977, which is cheap for that splendor.
Outside, bustling streets. The lamps are held up by devils.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
May 8th, 2015 at 22:47
sosyal!
May 8th, 2015 at 23:35
the Colombo cafe in downtown Rio de Janeiro is also beautiful. We were lucky to get seats there last year. Everything looked old and grand. There’s always a long line of people waiting to get in. We went in just to try their brigadeiro sort of like a chocolate truffle
May 10th, 2015 at 15:03
I am truly in awe of the skill and dedication of those involved in the preservation and restoration of historical buildings such as this (am curious to see how it looked as a warehouse). Food would probably be farthest from my mind in the midst of all that old world opulence and grandeur. I would likely just sit there, mouth agape, with a crick in my neck from staring at that ornate ceiling. That said, those two cookies (?) look melt-in-your-mouth buttery/chocolatey.
May 10th, 2015 at 21:14
Amazing, all splendor everything.
May 10th, 2015 at 22:28
avignon: The site was acquired by an Italian hotel chain and rebuilt, but they say the renovation was done according to the original plans.
May 11th, 2015 at 11:09
Wow, lovely! You didn’t have dessert? Btw, sent you an e-mail. Hope you can read it!