Szent István Étterem, Szeged, Hungary

If a restaurant is on the next corner from your residence, it is hard to imagine that it might be unknown to you. This is the case with today's restaurant too, I have already been there. So again, I went for the safe solution.

The restaurant is in a nice building, the interior is also very nice, somewhat rustic, if you can catch my point. The waiters are nice, so the first impressions are very much OK.

The menu is long - and not only this makes it typical Hungarian. Also, the foods are a good selection of Szeged, Hungary and the world. The chefs dares to mix modern and traditional meals on the pages. The menu changes with seasons, so you can expect to something really fresh every time you visit them.

The wine selection is just perfect, you can order every wine by glass or by bottle, just as you want it. The more adventurous can go for tasting every wine in the selection: they encourage you to do it. Surprisingly, I went for the beer on brew: Gösser.

The main dish was the kick off point, some interesting thing: roasted turkey stripes with hot pasta. The combination sounds like a bachelor's creation on noon after a long night in the pub. Make a nice roasted turkey, make a tomato sauce with paprika-pepper, put it on penne. Still, as the spicing was very well chosen, it became something really interesting. It is definitely a good food, maybe just not really high class. I do not if I would order it again, but I liked it. Like the girl from the other class.

The dessert was the surprise of the week. Cheese cake with William's pear and some raisin-sauce. My god, what a masterpiece. The sponge was hard as it should be, for this type of tarte, the cream was super-light and the pear was just on the edge of vanishing, but still present. Not too sweet at all, a very light sourness of the pear and some yogurt made it near perfect. Why not fully? Because the full perfection was provided with the raisin-sauce, made with Greek raisin and some nice muscat wine.

Even without the past experiences I would say that this restaurant is an excellent one. The food is good, well-priced, the ambiance is lovely, the waiters OK. Need good food in the center of Szeged? The Szent István Restaurant should be one to think about.

Szeged étterem, Szeged, Hungary

It was quite evident that this blog should not start unplanned. Not with a shitty restaurant that I just have stumbled upon while traveling. And if it happens to be in Szeged, where I am living now, let's start with the restaurant that gave its name to the town. Or maybe, it was the other way around. Who cares?

I tell you, I had quite bad feelings about this restaurant. I knew it got its name back in the communism and it had awful music at its terrace. And this feeling did not get any better when I was on my lonely journey to my table. As there was nobody to escort me there, and the restaurant was filled - with empty tables.

Fortunately, I was assigned to a lovely, smiling waitress instead of the chavette who greeted me at the door. The menu was very long - as it is usually, I mean in Hungary. Surprisingly, only the Hungarian standard Dreher beer was on the brew, so I went for this. Choosing the foods, I made little effort: I went for safe stereotypes.

The starter was the obvious fish soup with paprika, Halászlé. They offer the choice of having a small portion (starter) or a bigger one (main dish). I really appreciated that they gave free bread with it, it showed good will. Just as the soup itself. It was made in a very international way, with good spicing, only very softly hot. The fish was perfectly cooked and well cleaned of fishbone. It was evident that it was dropped in the souped only after it was already cooked with some less good looking parts of the fish - and it is good. What is not so good, if you can tell it by the taste of the fish. And I could. All in all, the halászlé was a good average experience.

Chelsea chicken was the Blues' choice on the menu. It is basically chicken breast stuffed with bacon and cheese inside, and then deep fried. Well, the idea is rather traditional. So was the garnishing: french fries. The taste was rather international. You may think I use this word as a bad adjective. Yup, you may be a bit right. All the main dish would have been this boring without one thing: pickles. The cabbage salad that was on the side of the dish was just awesome. The sourness of it was just perfect, the intensity of the taste was astonishing. I dare to say it was fucking good.

If I have to summarize the whole lunch I had at the restaurant I should say nothing less and nothing more than a simple good. Of course, you will never get fond of thing you just call good.