Red Pepper Étterem — Restaurant in Budapest

A Truly Disappointing Experience at Red Pepper

This was, without a doubt, one of the worst dining experiences we’ve ever had in Budapest.

We arrived at Red Pepper at 16:22 today and were informed that we needed to wait 10-15 minutes for a table. While waiting, we noticed that other customers who arrived after us were seated immediately. Curious, we politely asked the waiter, “Excuse me, it seems like they arrived after us but were seated first. Could you clarify?” The waiter responded that they had reservations. We accepted the explanation without issue.

However, at 16:37, the same waiter suddenly rushed over and said, “Now you can have a table, but tell me, how long have you been waiting? Five minutes?” (In reality, we had been waiting for 15 minutes, as originally told.)

As we followed him to our table, he abruptly said, “You should be thankful you’re getting a table—stop screaming like a baby girl!”

At this point, we completely lost our appetite. We asked calmly, “Are we not allowed to ask a simple question?”

Shockingly, the waiter himself then raised his voice, “It takes time to answer your silly questions!”

Feeling completely disrespected, we decided to leave. This kind of rude and unprofessional service is unacceptable. Hopefully, no one else has to experience such treatment at...

Not the experience I had hoped for.

I visited recently and unfortunately became very ill after eating the deer stew. Within about 20 minutes of finishing the meal, I became violently sick and spent the rest of the day in bed. When I went back to let the restaurant know, the staff member was polite, apologized, and took my name and email. He mentioned there had been other complaints the day before, so it seems I wasn’t the only one affected.

He kindly offered me a coffee or beer, which I had to decline as my stomach was still very unsettled. While I appreciated the apology, I was disappointed that no one followed up with me afterward. Whether that was due to embarrassment or something else, I’m not sure, but it left me feeling the situation wasn’t taken as seriously as it should have been.

Sadly, the whole experience wasn’t great from the start — I had to ask three times for the check during my meal, and then to end up with food poisoning made it worse. I didn’t ask for compensation and am not writing this to seek any, just to share honest feedback.

I truly hope this was a one-off issue with the deer stew, and I wish the team the best moving forward. However, based on this experience, I wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending the restaurant or...

We stumbled upon this lovely restaurant and went in, we found the staff very friendly and helpful with their recommendations from the menu. To start I had a glass of Jamason whiskey to warm me up from the cold, my wife had a glass of red wine. We had the fish soup to start, that was delicious, very strong in flavour and the fish was cat-fish, I then had the Duck Breast cooked with fruit. This was so tasty and filling, my wife had the pork with roast potatoes also delicious, I can highly recommend this restaurant. I will have to visit here again before I travel home. On our next visit the staff remembered us and gave us a big welcome, we had the Duck, chicken cordon blue and mushroom soup. And a bottle of...