Callas Café & Restaurant — Restaurant in Budapest

I visited the cafe for the buffet breakfast as I was staying at the hotel above. Firstly the setting is absolutely stunning, the feel and vibe of the place is absolutely incredible. It is a very pleasant place to sit and have breakfast in the morning and beats almost every other breakfast Buffet room in other hotels. It is probably the prettiest place to have breakfast in the whole city.

The selection however, is a little underwhelming… not a great deal of items on offer, but what is on offer is pretty good quality. There is a small cabinet with cheeses meats and yoghurts. The main counter has a few cereal selections and a couple of baskets of break rolls, croissants, pain au chocolat and another pastry. The drinks area has one coffee machine, water, orange juice and that’s it. What is very nice however, is that they offer eggs to be cooked how you want at the main counter, where there is a chef. Whether you want your eggs fried, scrambled or an omelette they can be made to order for you by the lady who works there. There is then a few sausages and some rice kept hot at the counter. If the area is busy however, the poor chef is run off her feet and the whole process can take forever. This same problem occurs at the coffee machine, which makes good coffee but my god is it slow… The problem is if you come to the breakfast buffet at peak times, it will be extremely busy in the small room where the food and drink selection is on offer. There will be a queue for the one coffee machine and due to the speed of the coffee machine, if there is more than three people in the queue you will be waiting about 10 minutes just to get a cup of coffee. Apart from the chef, there is one lady who basically runs the whole show and when the place is busy both of them are unfortunately rushed off their feet and can barely keep up with demand… things like glasses not being replaced and also a massive queue to get freshly made eggs, as well as food and drink running out, as well as replacing the tray for the ever side troublesome coffee machine can be a problem. It would be nice if they offered tea and coffee service at the table as this would speed thing up a bit, as well as be more in line with what other breakfast buffets offer. All in all It takes about 20 minutes at peak time just to get all the food from the buffet to your table which is a lot longer than it usually would be.

However once you actually have the food it’s of pretty good quality and you can eat it in the wonderful setting, but breakfast does take a little bit longer than you would otherwise expect. More selection, another and better working coffee machine and another member of staff to help would solve almost all the problems this place has. Still, the beautiful setting...

I really do not like leaving bad reviews... even if a place isn't for me or isn't the nicest, I like to give the benefit of the doubt that it was just an off day. However, I would caution against this place.

We had dinner here as it's close to the Opera which we were attending that evening. The interior is nice, but it is very clearly designed as a tourist trap. The food was stale and incredibly salty. My partner ordered a lasagne which was hot around the edges but cold at the centre (microwaved from frozen clearly)... The service was really odd too. We both ordered starters and mains - they brought out my starter and main together. The waitress apologised in fairness, but nothing was done to rectify it. Then, when paying, there was a service charge included in the bill - but the waitress asked for an additional tip... I assume the waiting staff don't receive the service charge because of this? That or she was trying to take advantage of the fact we may not have noticed the service charge on the receipt :/

Oh, and it was also the most expensive meal we had on our trip to Budapest on top of it all (€77 for two starters, two mains, and a bottle of sparkling water...) Either way, this isn't an establishment worth going to. There are so many amazing restaurants in the city to try, please...

Extremely rude staff. Before ordering, I asked the waiter, whom I had seen several times there before, “How are you doing?” He refused to answer me, and said that he was busy, pressing me, although I had not wasted a second of his time, to quickly give him my order. When I asked him what was going on, he repeated his previous answer. I picked up my things and left, telling him that he had been rude. What is puzzling is that he said “Sorry!” several times, as I was leaving. If he knows it’s wrong to treat people this way, why does he do it? Last time, a colleague of his came to my table, starting to pull away my food while I wasn’t finished, and despite the fact that I hadn’t closed the dish with my utensils. And he was so forceful that I had to insist. This restaurant has a good atmosphere and its customers deserve better treatment. Luckily, there are many other restaurants around them, and I could quickly find a place with proper service. It is sad that one be compelled to write such a review. And it leaves me puzzled that people can...