Strudel House Budapest, Első Pesti Rétesház — Restaurant in Budapest

The place looks nice, interior design is something to look at while you wait for your food but the restaurant is on the small side and, because it seems to be popular, is always crowded. From here, I think, start the problems. When you enter, nobody even greets you. They even don’t seem to notice you. Maybe only if you block the pathway of a waiter delivering food. When you try to make yourself seen, you get rushed answers like “ask him”, pointing to someone. When you ask the indicated person, we receive an answer unrelated to our question, “4 minutes”. Maybe they don’t know English… after the allotted time has passed, the person continues to work as if he’s building the great pyramid of Giza out of strudels. Finally, another person takes our order, after more than 7 minutes of just standing there, trying to not inconvenience the waiters. Strudel was hot, as you would expect, being served from a hot plate, but not much to write home about. Curd was ok, although it should have had some fruits in there, maybe I got the one piece where the fruit wasn’t there, and apple is just as you would have expect, nothing special. Apricot was too “stringy” for my taste. Perhaps they started as a strudel place but now they want to be more of a restaurant and I think this is causing...

I want to give this place five stars for the incredible interior design alone, and the very good food we overall had here. Sadly the service is AWFUL. You are seated straightaway in a very, very busy place and then the service disappears. So you have to flag down a waiter. The food comes very quickly after but being ignored for a time of tiring.

That said we ate here two nights in a row as it stays open later than other places and as a said they food is very good. The first night I got the raspberry soup… and pickles (separately!) The soup was sweet as expected especially with the dollop of whipped cream atop and the pickles were sour. So I greatly enjoyed my meal. Excellent portion size. The second night I got the roasted fish with the veggie strudel. The dish was fairly bland including the strudel but my husband raved on his duck. The suggested wines are EXCELLENT but the pours are small for the prices.

Overall not sure I...

Strudels are made fresh at Elsö Pesti Reteshaz Strudel House, where the dough is stretched out thin and then layered with toppings before being baked. There are traditional sweet strudels on the menu but savory ones as well, and I tried the Hortobogy style poultry meat strudel, which was stuffed with chicken and served with a light paprika sauce and airy dollops of sour cream mousse, which made for perfect complements to lighten up the savory filling. On the more traditional side, I also got the sour cherry and poppy seed strudel, which had a balanced sour flavor from the cherries and a sweet flavor from the poppy seed mixture. This was a great place to try Hungarian “Retes,” and the atmosphere of the restaurant and the plating of the food were both elegant...