0,75 Basilica WINE BAR & BISTRO — Restaurant in Budapest

If I could give negative stars I would. They “lost” our reservation for 9 people after we asked to confirm our reservation and told us they couldn’t seat us since it was going to rain that night despite us seeing the hostess write down our reservation when we made it a week in advance. They refused to seat us and we had to stand there arguing with the manager for 15 minutes before they “found a way” to seat us. Let me remind you that we were a big group of 9 people that were ready to spend a lot of money on food and drinks. Throughout our meal, we noticed that several large tables on both lower and upper floors remained empty during our entire meal. Service was extremely slow, we waited 20 minutes for our appetizers and in between entrees. One of us had an allergic reaction to one of the dishes, and there was no indication of any nuts being used in the dish. He let the manager know, but the manager was extremely rude. He was unnecessarily aggressive and refused to admit there were nuts in the dish even though he was literally having an allergic reaction. He asked if my friend if he wanted another entree, and he said no because he would throw it up if he ate anything after the reaction. The manager just said “ok” and laughed. They ended up refusing to admit there were any nuts in the dish and even claimed that my friend was pretending he had a reaction because he didn’t like the food. And to add to that, the food was bland and flavorless and was incredibly disappointing. So if you want an atmosphere of rude management, flavorless food, and a business that doesn’t want to serve their customers, come to this...

This place deservedly gets pretty decent reviews and having eaten here twice during our recent trip, I can see why.

The first time, we were hungry and it was the first place we came to after exiting our apartment. Turned out to be a good choice. The staff were superb, friendly, chatty, service was quick (even in the middle of Christmas market season), the food was lovely, the drinks flowed and so what if the prices were not as keen as some other places, we left well-sated.

The confit duck leg was a big hit, tasty as.... Others had more traditional beef and chicken / paprika dishes which were delicious also.

We went back a couple days later for breakfast and had a range of food. There were no complaints about the Hungarian breakfast and the full English was also good.....with just one mutter about 'the sausage not being quite like those in the UK' .....so I ate it for him; nothing wrong with that sausage my friend.

Wife and I both had scrambled eggs on toast (it said bread, but the waiter agreed to toast it - good man). One of life's little pleasures is perfect scrambled eggs, rather than cooked to rubber, and the chef duly obliged; it was lovely. The Eggs Royale also looked good - though the sausage was good from the previous complainant, there was sadly nothing left on that plate.

Combine it with your trip to Szent Istvan's Basilica (another treat to visit - see separate review) as it is literally right next door.

Go...

I give two stars for the pretty good food and ok wine list. The location is also amazing, but I left this place so angry I don't think I can give more than 2 stars.

I arrived here before my friend in order to finish some work and drink a couple glasses of wine. She arrived 1.5 hours after me. Once she arrived, the server completely ignored me, as I suppose he found it easier to speak to her (native) Hungarian. He was perfectly fine to speak English/ my broken Hungarian to me before, but never said another word in English the rest of the time and never looked at me once the rest of the time as if I wasnt there.

It took 90 minutes for our food to arrive. On the rare times we could flag down our waiter, he continued to promise my friend (not me of course) 5 more minutes. If he had just acted like I was there when he was apologizing or explaining even one time, it would have been so much better. My wine glass sat empty most of the time I was here. We were given 10% off our bill and offered a free dessert that never materialised. After another 30 minutes we gave up, paid, and left.

Our bill (after discount) was €43.

This was such a bad experience. I get that this place is super busy with tourists, but they clearly feel they can get away with anything because of...