Refurbished and repositioned, returning to its original roots, the Gundel restaurant – which features a mid-range menu showcasing legendary Hungarian dishes – is set to open, having been taken over by the Eventrend Group in May.

The new operator, the Eventrend Group, which has leased the venue – regarded as Hungary’s most famous restaurant – along with the Bagolyvár restaurant under a long-term, 25-year contract. The irony of the situation is that 

Over the past few decades, Hungarian diners have disappeared from the world-famous and renowned Gundel restaurant, and it has increasingly become a place known to everyone both at home and abroad, yet the vast majority have never been there, even though tens of thousands of people still visit the City Park every weekend. 

Following the refurbishment and change of management in the 1990s, Károly Gundel’s former restaurant became an elitist, stuffy establishment. Guests were required to wear a tie and jacket, in a place where, a century earlier, the restaurateur’s ten children had run about amongst the tables and everyone had felt at home. Young soldiers would pop in with their sweethearts for a coffee and a cake, or for a lunch of boiled eggs in goulash, just as the elegant, wealthy families did, who could afford to sample the entire menu. Gundel’s terrace, which could seat a thousand people, stretched all the way to the zoo’s Japanese garden; in summer, a staff of 250 worked there, and on some days they served as many as three thousand portions of food. 

Károly Gundel’s restaurant became legendary and a popular, bustling venue precisely because people from all walks of life, regardless of the size of their wallets, all felt at home there and visited it regularly, 

It wasn’t just the occasional graduation ball or important family occasion that was celebrated there – as was the case for the majority of the fifty to sixty guests who have been arriving in ever-smaller numbers of late. Zoltán Kőrössy, co-founder of the new operating company, Eventrend Group, said at a press conference on the reopening of the Gundel restaurant that they want to return to their roots. The Gundel menu has been set for eighty to a hundred years; there is no need to rethink anything, as it is regarded as the foundation of Hungarian gastronomy, and one can still rely on these legendary dishes today.

The official opening is on Wednesday; following a short trial period, the old-yet-new menu and the revitalised dining concept will make their debut. András Wolf, executive chef at the restaurant – which is owned by Danubius Hotels but operated by the Eventrend Group – has been working alongside Viktor Moldován, who recently returned from Japan, to perfect the authentic flavours based on the original recipes over the course of many months. The reason why the savoy cabbage stew did not make it onto the menu is that they were unable to find a supplier capable of delivering ingredients of consistent quality for this vegetable 365 days a year. However, we have learnt that the eleven most popular of Hungary’s most famous and well-known dishes – a sort of ‘national selection’ – have become permanent fixtures on the menu. 

The interiors of Gundel were conceived jointly by interior designer Ildikó Hergenrőder and theatre director Zsolt Meskó, transforming Gundel – divided into a café and a restaurant – into a theatrical experience, complete with a period-style horse-drawn carriage featuring a four-piece female Gypsy band. This musical ensemble, unique in the world, is a key element of the repositioned Gundel, where Panna Cinka’s Roma band once performed. 

Pricing was a key aspect of the repositioning, Zoltán Kőrössy noted. Their clear aim is to open the restaurant’s doors as widely as possible to their clientele. In the café, breakfast dishes start at 2,000 forints, main courses at 4,000 forints, and the great classic Gundel desserts are also available from 2,000 forints. In the restaurant section, at dinner time, the customisable three-course menu costs 10,500 forints and the four-course menu 12,600 forints, served on Zsolnay porcelain with silver cutlery and damask table linen.