Textúra — Restaurant in Budapest

Textúra was one of the most wonderful, or just simply the best, culinary experience we had. We visited many 1-2-3 stars Michelin restaurants all around the world. This might just be the best. Each dish showcased the skill level of the chef on the main bites: the duck liver encased in fondant; the sorbet for palate cleanses; the sturgeon and the sirloin. And its complements demonstrate the playfulness of the chef’s approach: the duck liver with 3 different tomato based touch of sauce, sweet sun-dried dollops, Hungarian tomatoes sauce and tomato terrines; then top it with crispy herbs to create the pumpkin leaves and vine with basil olive oil for the plate as pumpkin patch. The palate cleanser played alongside 3 main ingredients: dill, cucumber and lime. It plated so beautifully and with simplicity on a cold stainless martini stemware. The cucumber-lime sorbet was delicious, it sat on top of a fluffy yogurt cloud, sandwiching a small layer of icee like a matrimonial blessing marrying the two. Bury underneath this blissful treat was just a touch of honey crispy granola. The rice crispy cucumber dill flavor cracker top the martini and at 4 sides adorned with cucumber dill gel drops. Then, the Sturgeon with its caviar almost steal the show. Another great creation mouthwatering dish. I had a tough time decided how to start this dish; caviar first, sturgeon first, the creamy lobster base sauce or the yummy fennel puree. While the deliberation was going on, the dish was finished without a trace. With just ample time, we were presented with our steak. A plate of wonder! It has many flavor of celery but you saw no green or stalk. This you taste me and you see me not game went around the sirloin like children around their grandmother. The Mille feuille was made with thinly sliced celery root au gratin style and no grease. The glazed style au-jus was flavored with celery. Then darting around the dishes were celery pickled rounds and dehydrated pieces. It just played off so well. Next one was the Apricot chamomile desert. It has a light milk anise sorbet and a mousse served with honey apricot syrup. Edible apricot fruit chew shaped as flowers and butterfly crowned the jewels the. A new discovery brought us to a small wafer hidden as reward of cleaning out your beautiful plate. Just when we think we can’t eat anymore, here comes the Petite Four. A peanut of caramel milk chocolate that is savory versus the Russian honey layered cake with a touch of mango gel. This was one fun experience. On top of this, we had the best and most patience waiter attending our table. He relentlessly answered all our questions, find out the ingredients that surprised us. Just amazing personality. The dining room was contemporary but warm, lighting was perfect, noise level even at full house wasn’t bad at all. With bottle of wine, our bills round up to about $200 a person. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that I would come back to Budapest...

Textúra was the most disappointing meal I’ve had in quite a long time. First, we arrived and were offered a bottle of wine. It was a Sauska Brut that was quite over-priced compared to the taste and market for that type of wine. Next, we ordered two appetizers and two main entrees. It took them 40 minutes to bring us the two appetizers - a trout dish as well as a goat cheese. The goat cheese appetizer was heavy on the goat cheese. The kohlrabi and apple added little to the dish, as it lacked any opposing flavors to balance the dish. The trout appetizer was bland at best. The trout was small and mildly flavorful. However, the accompanying “green strawberries” were actually pickles that overpowered the dish. The celery purée added nothing to the fish and I’m not quite sure what that added to the entree. As we waited for our main entrees, another waiter came over to us with the same exact appetizers that we had just eaten, and we had to kindly tell him that we had literally just eaten those exact dishes and we were waiting for our main entrees. In total, we waited about one hour and forty-five minutes to receive our entrees. Mind you this restaurant serves small portions as they consider themselves fine dining. I think they take on too many patrons at once for their kitchen staff to keep up with, and this is evidenced by other reviews noting a drastic waiting time for dishes. The sea bream with truffle risotto was actually quite good. It was the one dish that my girlfriend and I actually enjoyed. However, the chicken paprikash was another disappointing dish. The chicken was dry and of weird consistency. It did not look like it came from a breast or a thigh. It was a mottled texture. The pairing was a cottage cheese dumpling which was not fully cooked as the folded over edges were hard in texture. The dish was quite under satisfying. All in all, this was the most expensive meal we had in Budapest but it lacked the flavor that one would expect from a team that is associated with a Michelin star restaurant. This was a failure given the wait times, the lack of coordinated service, the prices, and the lack of flavor. I challenge them to do better. If you are a tourist, there are plenty of other Hungarian restaurants in the area which are more affordable, have better portions, have better service, and have way more abundance of flavors you’d want to enjoy on a visit...

Overpriced, expected way more!

I originally wanted to dine at Borkonyha, operated by the same company across the street but due to the COVID pandemic, that restaurant has been closed. Unfortunately the experience was less than satisfying.

The modernist interior of the restaurant looks rather cheap, made up of IKEA tables and chairs. It has no reference or respect to the historic building it resides in. I was particularly taken back by the lack of table clothes in one of the most expensive restaurants in Budapest. The big wine rack at the bar is impressive but everything else looks generic and without personality. The tables are rather awkwardly placed, too close to each other, so often our waiter has had a hard time passing between tables. In addition, we had a reservation but we didn’t seem to have a table sitting for us when we arrived.

We opted for the “menu de dégustation” for two people, that had a sobering price tag of HUF 23,000 (about $80) per person, on pair with medium to upper scale restaurants in NYC. For this price I expected my pallets to be teased by the Michelin Star chef’s latest experiments. Instead we got his professional presentation without taste or rather, “goût.”

The five-course meal was presented beautifully, but instead of pallet-teasing savors, they were dominated by salt, with a touch of sourness across all five dishes. There was apparently little attention paid by the chef to the balance between flavors (or textures, as one would expect in a restaurant called “Texture”). With the exception of the dessert and the nicely but rather blandly cooked lamb, there was not one memorable dosh during the entire evening.

We ended up paying HUF 64,000 ($250) for two people including a mediocre bottle of Hungarian sparkling wine by Sauska. Even though our waiter was very nice, I will not come back to this restaurant, which seems to me as a failed attempt to follow-up with the...