Frici Papa — Restaurant in Budapest

Nice and little Restaurant with a big variety of different dishes. It is a typical and traditional Hungarian restaurant for a very reasonable price.

FOOD DRINKS For the drinks we ordered some Beer, Water and the Homemade Lemonade, which was very tasty and typical Hungarian and we can recommend it. For the Food we tried different dishes, which I will enumerate. The Bean Soup was good and tasty. It was cooked very well and the beans had a perfect bite. We ordered the bean soup twice . The first time at the evening and here it was perfect und the second time for lunch, which was not so good at all. The taste was not so intensive. Maybe because it is cooked all the day and in the evening it it going to be more intensive. We tried the fried mushrooms, which was not really good. I think that they use mushrooms out of a glas, because when you bite one, the hot water runs out of the fried mushroom and all in all the taste was not like fresh mushrooms. For the Main we ordered the Paprikás Csirkemell for 1699 HUF, the Vörösboros marhapörkölt for 1899 HUF and the Nockerln. All of them were very tasty and good at all. For me it could be a little bit more spicy, but all in all it was a reasonable food with good and a lot of meat. For the sides we got some tomato and cucumber salad with Creme Fresh. Both of them were nice, but a little bit too sweet at all. In total there are good salads and you will have nothing to complain. For the dessert I went for 2 Palacsinta (319 HUF each) with cottage cheese and nut. It was a good finish and a nice dessert, but the nut filling had a little old taste and the cottage cheese was too warm. The roll both Palacsinta and afterwards they put it in the microwave. This is nice and okay, but with a very hot cottage cheese the taste was not sooo good at all.

SERVICE All of the waiters speak a good englisch language. We felt welcome and everybody was very friendly. If you want to pay, then you have to go to the counter and tell the waiter you table number and then you can pay in cash or by card.

RESTAURANT The Restaurant has two floors and only seats inside. It is not that cosy at all and has more the character of a Gastro Pub.

LOCATION The Restaurant is located in the Budapest city Center and directly at the Kiraly Utca. There are some parking spaces around the restaurant, but you have to...

A Time Capsule with Tough Goulash

​On my maiden voyage to Budapest some 20+ years ago, I was a young lad armed with a Lonely Planet guide as my only compass. It pointed me to Frici Papa, promising an "authentic Hungarian canteen." ​And it truly was. It was a glorious dive into Hungarian gastronomy: fantastic, hearty dishes for pennies, served with blunt efficiency.

​Fast forward two decades. I returned, this time without the guidebook, guided only by nostalgia. I am pleased to report that almost nothing has changed. Except for two minor details: the prices (which are now decidedly 21st-century) and the long, winding queue of tourists patiently waiting outside. ​Inside, it remains a perfect gastronomic panopticon of the 1980s. ​The food itself provided a fascinating contradiction. The csirkepaprikás (chicken paprikash) was genuinely excellent—exactly the comforting, flavorful dish I remembered. The beef goulash, however, was a tragedy. The meat was tough, and several pieces were so hard they were simply inedible. I had to create a small, sad pile of rejected beef on the side of my plate. ​On the bright side, the service was lovely and remarkably fast, no doubt optimized to manage the tourist conveyor belt. ​Frici Papa has successfully become a tourist attraction, a living museum of "Eastern Bloc Dining." As someone who actually originates from the Eastern Bloc, this is a form of entertainment I can happily skip next time. For similar money, I'll opt for a restaurant that focuses more on the food and less on the Cold War LARPing. ​I’d give it 2.5 stars, but I'll round it up to 3, purely for the memory of what that...

Best meal I have had in ages!

Me and my Mum are both Vegetarian and after finding out that Goulash is the Hungarian meal to have while travelling here we searched for a vegetarian alternative. It didn't matter which blog I went on, everyone recommend Frici Papa.

We went Monday evening and were seated straight away even though it was very busy, the first guy came across quite grumpy, didn't greet us just pointed us to a general area to sit. but we heard this from people's preview reviews.

The guy who served us was very nice, he spoke English which was handy for when we pronounced things incorrectly, the menu is in Hungarian, English and Spanish (and maybe something else as well I can't remember)

We ordered the Gombapaprikás (Mushroom Goulash), one of us had it with rice and one of us had it with chips. We thought the rice and chips would be on a seperate bowl/plate but it was served on the main plate which was fine, we shared each others. Everyone was SO TASTY!

We can not wait to try and replicate it when we are home.

The meal was so hot it burnt a little which we liked because it is just nice to receive hot food at a great temperature.

Our meal only came to just over £17 altogether which is a fantastic price, we added it up before hand but the price was higher so there is a small surcharge (I think 10%) but considering how cheap the food it then it wasn't much at all.

You have to pay at the counter.

There were toilets inside.

There is lots of nice paintings and such around the restaurant.

I have already recommended this restaurant to people I know and if we come back to Budapest again we will 100% be...