The Garden Café & Restaurant — Restaurant in Budapest

The first time we visited this place, it was at their old location. We really enjoyed their gözleme and had a pleasant time. We even met the lady who owns the place — she took our order and chatted with us a bit. Our second visit was after they had moved to their new garden location, and it was a completely different experience — in a very negative way.

The waiter dropped the menu on our table and left, then took a very long time to return for our order. The eggplant gözleme they used to serve was no longer available. The food took ages to arrive, and when it did, it was nothing like the delicious flavors we had tasted before.

We waited a long time for a waiter to bring the bill, but since no one came, we got up to pay at the counter. There, a different woman — someone we hadn’t seen before and assumed was a waitress — clearly expected us to leave a tip. I want to highlight that there’s already a 12% service charge listed on the menu, which we were paying. Yet this woman, who hadn’t served us and didn’t ask anything about our experience, still expected an extra tip. The moment we subtly indicated that we wouldn’t be leaving one — since we weren’t satisfied and she hadn’t served us — her attitude suddenly changed. She rudely crumpled the receipt from the card machine in her hand and turned her back on us. Our “Thank you, have a nice day” was left hanging in the air.

This café, which we liked on our first visit, hasn’t just changed its location — it has turned into a place I wouldn’t recommend to anyone who values...

As always, I start the experience at 5 stars and unless things go wrong, the rating stays there. I would say that the overall feeling with this place was “don’t get sucked in by what you see on social media”.

The cafe is in a lovely building, beautiful courtyard. We had a nice waitress. We placed our order and our drinks came, so far so good. Good coffee.

When the food came, we were disappointed. The cilbir poached eggs were overdone and hard, the sauce was bland. The Aegean breakfast sadly was also tasteless. Out of all the brunch places we have visited in Budapest, this was 2nd worst for food. This is where the first star was lost.

After we finished our meal, we waited a really long time to get the manager’s attention for the bill. After the manager came over and we asked for the bill, we kept waiting. After a while, we gave up waiting and went inside to pay. The manager was in there berating a junior staff member, and continued to do so while we stood there. We of course do not know what happened in the background, but it was not appropriate to speak to her in this way in front of customers. This is where another star was lost. Our original waitress came and helped us with the bill, thank you to her for the good service.

Regardless of the way things ended, based on the food alone, I would not return to eat. I would only head back to have a coffee in the...

It's a shame - I was really looking forward to this place cause the food looked so good. Took them 10 minutes to bring out tap water. Was taking up to 20 to bring out olives...as a tourist, don't entirely want to spend a sunny day starving in the back of a café...

(Edit) I see that the manager has added a response.

What actually happened was the server took my order and then told me the kitchen didn't have simit ready for ten minutes. I asked to have olives so I'd have something to nibble on in the meantime. When the manager approached me as I was leaving, they said the olives were taking longer because the pitta was being made from scratch...I literally wanted olives cause I was hungry (and I've made pita...so this is an awful excuse) 👀 incidentally, this place ended up being the one kind of place worse than a fast food place: slow, ride and incompetent. It's quite obvious the kitchen didn't do enough prep work in the morning and had neither breads and the manager is covering up. Was going to give the place...