La Movida Bar & Restaurant — Restaurant in Budapest

First of all, I would like to emphasise that I really enjoyed the taste of the food! The interior is also very lovely and I do genuinely recommend this place! Almost everything is gluten free and the vegan tacos were so tasty and unusual!

The reason I am writing this review is because I feel really sad about my personal experience and need to let it off my chest, and I’m sure this will not apply to most people visiting the restaurant.

I ate here with my dog (I called before to make sure it’s dog friendly), the staff welcomed him so warmly and made me feel welcomed, I felt so grateful. Two food photographers working there even asked to take photos of my dog to promote the restaurant. However, the bright artificial photography light and the excitement caused my dog to start (happy) barking, since it was so stimulating. He is normally relatively calm in restaurants, and I didn’t want to ruin the photos, so I waited until they were finished and restrained him. He stopped barking right away when they finished the shoot. Then, a staff member told us that if our dog barked more, we need to leave the restaurant. I asked if he wants us to leave now and he said he’s not sure. We stayed and ate but felt very uncomfortable.

I left the restaurant with a smile cause I didn’t want to be upset at something small, but I realized that I feel hurt for my dog because he didn’t do anything wrong and would have been calm if it wasn’t for the over-stimulation by the staff themselves. The photographers could’ve stopped the photo shoot when he started barking but they kept going, so I thought they didn’t mind. Or the staff could’ve kindly asked us if it was possible to keep the volume low. I felt like the restaurant threatened to kick us out for something they caused and nothing like this has ever happened to me before. On one hand, the staff were some of the most dog-friendly waitresses I’ve ever met, and then suddenly our dog almost got kicked out… please make up your mind! :(

So sorry for the long message, I hope you understand that I’m not trying to bring down your ratings and again, apart from the incident everything about the place was really so great! I would love to visit again in the future, but I feel scared to...

We have eaten twice in this restaurant over the last four weeks. The food, with the one exception I mention below, was excellent - the kitchen knows what it is doing and gave good ingredients. The margaritas tasted good and judging by their effects had a proper measure of tequila in them (not all cocktails are honest in this wicked world). Why then not a five star rating? Two things you would think a Mexican restaurant would naturally want to get right - olives and beer.

The olives were execrable- black pitted over marinated olive shapes tasted mainly of the salty brine in which, the pleasant and patient waiter informed me, they had come from Spain. Decent olives of different shades are available in modesty priced kebab outlets not 500 metres from Movida. At the prices charged here there is no excuse for not serving something with the texture and taste of an olive.

Then there was the beer. The beer menu was not great in range. Mexico was represented solely by Corona - what about the Modelo brewery? - and the IPA and Weisse which were out of stock when I dined here the first time had still not been replenished four weeks later.

Hopefully both these errors will be corrected by the time you eat there. Otherwise I am sure you will have...

I visited the place with colleagues. We've been asked to choose from the menu in advance so that the kitchen can prepare for our arrival. We sent an email with our choices and received confirmation. When we arrived they told us they can't serve argentin steak. (Most of us ordered that...) So we chose something else. I got a duck taco. Taco was raw and saltless, and they put some chocolate sauce under the rosé duck. Disgusting. The menu said nothing about this meal but allright, this meal is some specialty stuff... My bad... My second try from the menu was some cheese covered sausage casserole with tacos. Again, tacos were terrible, and sausage was too oily, greasy. I gave up. My colleagues tried some dessert specialty. A cake with whipped cream and some sort of milk freshly poured on it. It was edible, but that's the best they could tell. Waiters and waitresses were actually nice, but service was slow and they often got confused with the orders. Toilet is in terrible shape. Nearly all the taps are broken, and the men's room has no door, you can see the pissoirs from the outside... I don't recommend visiting this place, there are competitors to this place doing way better quality food...