Mom Leroy Bistro — Restaurant in Budapest

When I made my reservation for dinner on Dec 2, 2018 at the Leroy Bistro, I could see from the menu that the food and drink prices were rather high, even for Budapest. I simply chose to accept that, because of its convenient location that evening.

Service was friendly and prompt and two menus offer an eclectic mix of Hungarian, Italian and Asian dishes, the standard menu and the sushi menu, which also contains some other Asian-style dishes. We ordered from the latter, starting with salmon, sea bass and tuna nigiri and then a couple of Asian-style noodle dishes, the fried noodles with coconut curry, vegetables and chicken breast and the curry udon with vegetables.

Over all the sushi was OK. The salmon was clearly the best, tasting very fresh. The rice also seemed relatively well prepared. The sea bass felt like it had dried out a bit, perhaps mine was the end piece, but the taste and smell were fine. The tuna was clearly inferior, and I would not recommend ordering it. It did not appear to me to be sushi-grade tuna, but in any case, it had a distinctly fishy taste. It was also the highest price of the three. Note: I am writing this the next day and can say I had no ill effects from the tuna.

We both enjoyed our noodle dishes. The tastes were very pleasant, and the curry udon dish had a nice mild spicy burn to it. Although the coconut curry version was billed as having fried noodles, mine came with regular udon, which was perfectly fine, and I didn’t even inquire about it. But I was a little disappointed there weren’t more vegetables beyond some shredded carrot and something else equally innocuous. No broccoli or any kind of Asian vegetables I could discern. The curry udon dish my wife had did have broccoli, perhaps because she ordered the version with vegetables but no meat.

For dessert we both had the “brownie” with vanilla ice cream. These were disappointing, but not entirely unexpectedly so. In fact, I even told my wife the brownie would probably be more like chocolate cake than a real brownie, and sure enough, that’s what it was. This is not uncommon in Hungary. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t a brownie. The ice cream was just ok, not of particularly high quality (didn’t Woody Allen once say that ice cream was like sex in that even when it was bad, it was still pretty good?).

With the addition of one 4-deciliter glass of ordinary beer, one 1.5-deciliter glass of merlot wine and one pretty good espresso, the bill for the meal came to 15,710 forints. With the mandatory 12.5% service charge -- how much of that the waiter sees is unknown -- that came to a grand total of 17,675 forints, which hit my Visa card as $61.82. That’s a lot for any meal in Budapest, much less for one where the quality was only average. This was not fine dining. You can get much better meals elsewhere in Budapest with higher quality for this much or less. And so, the value here is quite low. I don’t know why the prices are so high here. Perhaps it’s because of high rents in the MOM Park facility. Or maybe it’s because in this area you have offices for some well-known multinational corporations who don’t care about these prices. Or maybe it’s that there really aren’t too many other restaurants in this area. Probably it’s a combination of all the above.

Would I go back to Leroy Bistro or recommend it to others? Perhaps, but only with eyes wide open, full disclosure and calibrated expectations. There is also a version of Leroy Bistro at the Budapest airport, but the reviews on Google of that operation would make me think twice about...

We were at Leroys for the first time yesterday, we me and mijn lovely lady couldnt make a choice from the menu, I decided to go for the Thai chicken salad it looked very inviting from the photo in the menu. When it arrived I was suprised at the amount I got and it looked just the same as the photo but tasted even beter than it looked, it was absolutely 💯 yummy yummy, we were served by David and he made it one of our best moments in Budapest ... very nice guy even though he didn't tell us the secret ingredients for the dressing 😂 somethings can beter kept a secret, my lady friend had the spring rolls, which I had to help her with 😉 these were just as yummy as the chicken salad with a spicy sauce I would highly recommend this place for a good bite to eat at...

Good food but terrible service time after time. Have been here a few times thinking that it would change for the better but it has not. When we approach the Girl at the entrance always asks “Can i help?, not too friendly, not the best way to greet possible guests. Then she often has difficulties accomodating us at a table. Have not met any waiters at this place that was smiling ir gentle, they do the service with no connection to the guest and you do not feel welcomed. Fancy enterior attracts “posh” people who want to show off. So despite the good food the place lacks atmosphere and has bad...