Ristorante Millennium da Pippo — Restaurant in Budapest

I am Italian and I live in Budapest. This place was suggested to me by a foreigner friend and I decided to give it a try with a mixed group of italian and non-italian friends. I know many other italian places in Budapest, ran by italians and -most importantly- for italians. To sum it up, this place is ran by italians for tourists, and serves low quality food. Pasta was dramatically overcooked and the tomato sauce was not good at all, slightly sour and with a combination of random spices on top (it was supposed to be a pasta with artichokes). The same tomato sauce was also used for the pizzas, which were not great but at least eatable. We asked Burrata as a starter and it was a simple Mozzarella di Bufala. I am not shocked by a place like this, I have been living abroad for 6 years in London, Paris and Budapest and I saw many. But the place is very expensive for what it offers, and I was expecting something different. Luckily, there are many italian places in Budapest which serve real italian food, or good italian food with a twist (fancy and expensive ones - Pomodoro, TG italiano, etc.- and less so -Gian Mario, Gustolato-). Most negative reviews here focus on the service, which might be a bit slow and cold. However this is the least of the problems. The issue here is the food. In our case the waitress was also kind to ask why we did not like the food. I did not want to argue and simply explained why. It was not nice to see the owner come out of the restaurant to overhear our comments without coming and explaining what went wrong and then go back inside as soon as we moved away. It is ok to serve one bad dish, or also to have a policy to make bad industrial italian food for foreigners, but be aware that this is what this place has to offer. By the way, it is worth to mention that now that I look again, none of the positive reviews comes from italians. A final appeal to non-italians who like this place: our cuisine can offer...

So, let's start with the fact that the staff was quite tense. But we were served by a young girl with little experience (she told us that she had only been working here for a couple of days, and that she was new) and she was very friendly and understanding. Today we visited this restaurant with the hope of having a delicious meal and having a wonderful evening, after a hard day with a flight. However, the food we ate spoiled not only our mood for the evening but also our desire to come back to them more. We ordered a dish with veal. But unfortunately, we were considered people who don't mess around with food at all, and how to distinguish pork from veal. Instead of veal, we were served pork. Although they don't have a single pork dish on their menu at all, which begs the question. What miracle does pork do in their kitchen at all?! If they "don't use" it in dishes. And besides, after we pointed out to them that it wasn't veal but pork, they simply ignored our request and said that's how it should be. Damn, we were so outraged because it shouldn't be like that, but there was another nuance. In addition to the food, they also indicated on the check a service fee of almost 10 euros. For this money you can really buy some things. I understand that there is already an agreement with the visitor about tipping the staff. But in fact they did it because they decided that it was necessary. This is not normal. And if we didn't want to leave them a tip for the staff?! Since this wonderful girl served us, we would have rather given her a tip than the entire staff. Honestly, this girl cheered us up. And if we talk about food, to be honest, not so much, we ate it all because we were extremely hungry after the plane. Thank you for...

After two visits I’m two disappointments richer. The first was an overcooked, dry and too salty chicken. On top of that, we were treated with a circus act when one of the chefs yelled at an unhappy customer and threw food items at him telling him to go to McDonald’s instead. Ridiculous, but entertaining nonetheless. The second was a ‘lasagna’, which technically was little more than a generic bland tomato sauce with minced meat and soggy sheets of pasta, very likely heated in a microwave (but I can’t be sure). The waiter recommended garlic bread, which I gladly ordered as a side. It turned out to be garlic-less pizza bread, which admittedly was enjoyable. This last thing can also be said about some of their pizza’s, excluding the seafood one which comes with totally overcooked shriveled mussels and barely any other seafood.

I would recommend that the chef/owner takes a closer look at his kitchen and how uninspired the dishes that come out of it are at this point, instead of plastering the windows with pictures of himself selling sneakers or berating customers when they have (legitimate) complaints. This restaurant proudly displays achievements and recognitions on its walls, but these are all nearly two decades old and it’s obvious that a lot has changed since. And not at all...