Ferragosto Bistro Budapest — Restaurant in Budapest

A very good quality Italian restaurant with big portions, tucked away in the VII. District. 📍Place: located close to Keleti Railway station, not the most welcoming area of Budapest, but they've managed to build a little oasis there with bistro style, cool Vespa seats and a medium sized garden area great for smaller groups too. 🍛 Food: the food was surprisingly amazing, I had the gnocchi Sorrentina (3200 HUF) made with real tomato sauce and parmesan. They serve pretty sizeable portions, the value for the price is incredible. I had a lemonade only for 990 HUF too, which was made from freshly squeezed lemon juice. I haven't tried the pizza (it looked great though), but we had a focaccia which was super fresh straight from the oven, crispy and fluffy. It is a little strange that they CAN make their dishes with home made pasta, but only if you ask and pay additional 300 HUF. I mean, if you already make pasta, just use them 🤷 👩🏻‍🍳 Service: the only uncomfortable part was the service. The server guy assigned to us was just too much, overplayed his role, had a comment on everything. He wanted to be cool and attentive but seemed forced and not genuine, ended up even irritating. Maybe my preference is a little less extroverted style so it might be okay to others. One strange thing to note as well, that you can not pay separately, which is very uncommon and...

We received extremely bad service here. The staff failed to follow even the most basic of European dining and service convention. Especially in a country like Hungary, this is unacceptable

We were served our main courses before we finished our appetizers. Now they made our food fifteen minutes too early, so they said they would remake it, and instead lied to us and just left it on the counter.

They didn’t bring out all the main courses together, billed us for stuff we didn’t order (water), and were rude. The waiter we had was very nice, and speaks good Hungarian, but I think there is a real issue here with management and their understanding of how dining works.

In general, the entire experience was a catastrophe and I can not recommend this place — especially if you’re bringing Hungarian guests. The food was OK. I’ve had diarrhea all day today (day after writing this review), but I’m not sure it’s related since I drank a lot that evening :-)

I’d also like to add that the vibe here is much closer to a sports bar rather than...

The service was tolerable, but I felt deceived with my buffalo pizza order because they didn’t inform me that they had run out of buffalo cheese and simply replaced it with regular mozzarella balls. When I pointed this out and mentioned that the bottom of the pizza was burnt, rubbery, and the tomatoes on it were not fresh—plus the use of dreadful Trappista cheese, which doesn’t even belong on a pizza—the waitress just grimaced. The tomato sauce was completely flavorless, and my family members also had issues: the pasta was problematic, the shrimp was not well cooked and tasteless, and they didn’t provide any parmesan either. The dessert was overly sweet. I was especially disappointed with the pizza—it was expensive yet very low quality. Italians would cry if they visited this bistro. The interior design was also depressing and gave off no Italian vibe whatsoever. It's disheartening to encounter such poor service. I hope the staff reads this and...