The good old days have returned to Városliget: the outdoor dining area at Gundel Restaurant has reopened, welcoming guests with a revamped menu, a children’s menu and even special offers for dogs.

That’s the news. But why did the menu need to be revamped after half a year? How does it all work? When can you say, „Yes, this is a new menu now, and it’ll be good”? Is there such a thing as a „final menu”? It’s particularly interesting it’s in a restaurant, where the words „custom”, „tradition” or „the past” feature in every other sentence of the conversation. The new menu With András Wolf We went through it with Gundel’s corporate head chef. The menu begins with a sort of appetising introduction – a list of the „national eleven”: Tokaji, Gulyás, Palóc, Újházi, Lecsó, Kárpáti, Budapest, Paprikás, Rákóczi, Somlói, Gundel.

W.A.: Goose liver prepared with Tokaji wine has previously been served as a cold starter; we now also recommend it served warm – that is, grilled goose liver matured in Tokaji Aszú, served with spiced sour cherries and kalács. Also new are the Budapest-style sirloin with confit potatoes and the lecsó with Mangalica sausage and eggs, which was included in the selection primarily because of its seasonal nature. The other dishes also featured in the previous „National XI”. However, there are still no foreign players on the list.

Let’s start with breakfast!

We serve these dishes until midday. We offer the classic Gundel breakfast selection, which includes premium Hungarian cold cuts, cheeses from Hungarian cheese producers, Gundel sausage rings, homemade jam, a hot drink and freshly squeezed orange juice. We also serve classic hot and cold breakfast dishes featuring eggs, sausages and frankfurters. We recommend our sourdough bread, baked in our own bakery, to accompany all our dishes.

But what about the other section of the menu – can the snacks be eaten from morning until evening?

Yes, we offer an all-day experience; in other words, if someone pops in during the day and just fancies a bite to eat, we want them to find something they’ll enjoy even then.

When guests say things like „I’m not really hungry, I’d just like a bite to eat”, our answer is lecsó, steak tartare,

Roman lettuce leaves with anchovy mayonnaise and a choice of chicken, prawns or goose liver, or perhaps the Gundel croque monsieur. The afternoon tea selection included an assortment of mini cakes and scones, mini sandwiches with Mangalica ham from Szatmár, Vászoly cheese and home-cured trout, along with a selection of drinks.

Can the changing of the seasons be seen in the selection of dishes?

The charcoal-grilled goat’s cheese salad, which is usually served with celery in winter, is now served with roasted peppers and cauliflower, giving it a summery twist. As for the soups, we’ve taken the bean soup off the menu and replaced it with spiced plum soup topped with a dollop of sour cream. The main courses? Layered potatoes, lettuce and egg-drop noodles are what people eat in summer. It’s not that we can’t make them in winter – but for me, this is summer, so naturally they’re on the menu too.

And to finish off, the classic desserts: Somlói galuska, Rákóczi-style cottage cheese cake and, of course, Gundel pancakes, which everyone here expects to be served.

For us, meeting expectations is about much more than that: it’s a matter of principle! It’s important. And I’m not just thinking of desserts, but of every single dish we serve. People often ask when and how Hungarian cuisine will become world-famous – I always tell them that Hungarian cuisine is only world-famous in Hungary, or perhaps not even here. But it will become world-famous in Hungary when we look upon these dishes – which are part of our heritage – with pride, prepare them with care, and enjoy them ourselves.

Most of the dishes featured on Gundel’s menu as part of the ‘national eleven’, or what we now call Hungarian cuisine, originated here, within the walls of this very establishment.

Most people think, for example, that paprika chicken has been around since the dawn of time and that even Prince Árpád used to eat it. Well, no – it actually began its journey here at Gundel.

Or Somlói galuska, as a centuries-old Hungarian sweet – but no, that’s not true, because we know full well that it was first made in 1958.

Am I right in thinking that, when selecting dishes, it was possible to return to one’s roots by first „stripping them down” to their very basics, and then fine-tune them to suit contemporary tastes, the ingredients available, or the culinary techniques at hand?

To a certain extent, yes, but there’s more to it than that. People often say they’re „reimagining” dishes. We, however, don’t want to do that. These dishes have been carefully devised. We like to rethink them. There’s a world of difference! For example, we’ve examined every ingredient. When it comes to flours, people often say, „this is a bad flour”. We don’t think there’s such a thing; rather, some flours are simply suited to different purposes. I don’t want to offend anyone, so I won’t mention any brand names, but we make our dumplings from one of the flours considered to be the poorest quality. We now know that bread, pancakes and dumplings each require three different types of flour. And we need to learn how to use them properly. This requires in-depth knowledge of ingredients and thorough technical expertise. And that’s what I call rethinking things.

We thought everything through – what we use, why we use it, and why we choose that particular thing. When we started experimenting with paprika chicken, we ordered twelve different types of chicken. And it wasn’t the „superstar” chicken that came out on top! The one we chose is – in my opinion – fantastic for paprika chicken, but dreadful for grilled chicken. That’s why you can’t simply declare one to be the ‘best chicken’. Semolina: some types are suitable for making cottage cheese dumplings, others for making semolina dumplings, but that doesn’t mean

Neither is better nor worse than the other; they’re simply suited to different purposes.

We tend to make sweeping generalisations – yet if there’s one area where there are no universal truths, it’s gastronomy.

Who drives change? Consumers, or those on the supply side?

Everyone. It works well when guests’ needs meet the traditions of hospitality. We love and eat these dishes, but ten years ago we couldn’t have imagined that a restaurant would have cabbage-stuffed cvekedli on the menu. However, we must believe in what we do, believe in our traditions, and believe that this is what our guests want. Because when this desire aligns with our vision, it makes for a very fortunate match.

When we launched the new menu, I wouldn’t have bet a single forint that foreign visitors would try the potato gratin, because it’s so „out of the ordinary” – in my opinion. Well, that’s not how it turned out! We had to serve out several portions on the very first day. They’re looking for new experiences; they recognise and appreciate it when they come across good quality.

When putting together the menu at Gundel, we were standing in the kitchen with Viktor Moldován, Gundel’s executive chef, spoons in hand – because a chef always tastes everything with a spoon; I, for one, even eat fried meat with one – so there we were, standing and tasting.

We were waiting for that moment when we simply couldn’t stop eating. Because a dish is only good – only really ready – when I sit down to it and can’t stop eating. And if that’s the case, then that dish will be just as good for the guest too.

This is a much-loved menu at the moment, but can we really say it’s perfect, that it’s complete, or that it’s finished?

A menu is never really finished. We’re always working on it, as we’re constantly learning. We learn from other places and other people, but most of all from our own mistakes. At a previous restaurant, we kept pork knuckle on the menu for ten years. I know that we make a much better pork knuckle today than we did ten years ago; even though it’s the same ingredient, the same pork knuckle and the same dish itself, it’s become much better thanks to our knowledge. I remember exactly how far we’ve come.

These are, of course, tiny, subtle differences that guests don’t necessarily need to know about – they’re more important to us. The differences amount to minutes, seconds or a single degree. Take the dumplings, for example: how much water we put on to boil, how many dumplings we tear into how many litres of water, which saucepan we cook them in, how many grams of salt we add, how many minutes the water boils – and so on. And there’s no such thing as „oh, we need more now”. In that case, we’ll cook the same thing twice, because that’s how it’s meant to be. But we’re constantly experimenting, and if we see that something has turned out better, then we make a change.