{"id":17979,"date":"2024-06-22T09:55:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-22T07:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gundel.hu\/?post_type=sajto&p=17979"},"modified":"2024-07-16T09:59:27","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16T07:59:27","slug":"13-photos-and-stories-from-the-130-year-old-gundel","status":"publish","type":"sajto","link":"https:\/\/gundel.hu\/en\/sajtoszoba\/13-kep-es-tortenet-a-130-eves-gundelbol\/","title":{"rendered":"13 photos and stories from the 130-year-old Gundel"},"content":{"rendered":"

A building on the edge of V\u00e1rosliget.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lyon \u2013 and perhaps the whole of France \u2013 would look a little different without the Bocuse family. Just as Vienna would without the Sacher family, the German capital without Lorenz Adlon, or the Roanne region without the Troisgros family. Generations of these famous hospitality families may not shape a city\u2019s destiny in quite the same way as decision-makers, but their fates are, in one way or another, intertwined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gundels were a family like that too, but it was purely by chance that they made their mark right here, in our country. Or rather, there are no such things as coincidences \u2013 as we all know. That is why we believe in them. Anyway, the point is that they found a home in Budapest, and it was here that the family name became a household name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The children of J\u00e1nos Gundel in 1890. The founder of this Hungarian hospitality dynasty was born in Bavaria in 1844 under the name Johann Adam Michael Gundel. He arrived in Hungary at the age of 13 and went to work for a relative, Gy\u00f6rgy G\u00e4rtner, a restaurateur in Buda. He started out as a busboy and, 18 years later, having acquired several restaurants, he also bought the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Among his creations was the \u2018pal\u00f3cleves\u2019 soup, devised in honour of Miksz\u00e1th. He had five children, of whom K\u00e1roly Gundel continued the family tradition in the hospitality industry and carried on the family legacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The building has stood in the City Park in this form since 1894 \u2013 that is, for exactly 130 years. At that time, the restaurant was run by Ferenc Wampetics; K\u00e1roly Gundel then leased it from the capital in 1910. From then on, it was not only guests who wore down the palace\u2019s red marble staircase; the Gundel family\u2019s life became so intertwined with their restaurant that they actually lived here as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

K\u00e1roly Gundel was born in Budapest in 1883. It would be impossible to summarise his life\u2019s work here, so let me instead mention just two words: the title of one of his most famous books:\u00a0The Art of Hospitality<\/em>. Although she never cooked at all, she was truly a legendary hostess, to whom we owe far more than just a few famous recipes. The photograph was taken in 1920, when she was 37 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

K\u00e1roly Gundel\u2019s family and Ferenc Wampetics in 1917.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although this photograph dates from the second half of the 20th century, it is nonetheless true that even around the time of the zoo\u2019s foundation, shady trees and plenty of greenery awaited visitors. According to recollections, the Zoo\u2019s palm trees naturally spent the winter in the Palm House, but as the warmer weather approached, Gundel\u2019s staff would spend weeks carrying them over to the restaurant\u2019s garden, where they spent the summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

K\u00e1roly Gundel and his wife, with their ten children, in 1924. Later, their 13 children went on to have a total of 26 grandchildren, including such famous figures as the actors Zolt\u00e1n Latinovits and Istv\u00e1n Bujtor, rock musician K\u00e1roly Frenreisz; their descendants also include sports reporter and presenter G\u00e1bor Tak\u00e1cs Gundel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gundel name became famous for the luxury menus served to celebrities, but K\u00e1roly Gundel was a fine host; there really was something for everyone at his restaurant. On the terrace, they used to serve savoury pretzels and boiled eggs in gravy, but many people would just pop in for a pint of draught beer after a stroll in City Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gundel\u2019s had its own 11-piece band and regulars\u201e tables. It is said that anyone could sit down near the entrance gate for a pretzel and a beer. The further in one went into the \u201ddepths\u2019 of the garden, the more affluent the company at the tables was likely to be: bankers, lawyers, doctors and artists, amongst others, used to spend their time here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The garden terrace in 1935, during its heyday in the interwar period. At that time, as many as a thousand chairs could be set out beneath the huge awnings and the shady trees. The restaurant had support facilities \u2013 unimaginable today \u2013 such as its own pigsty, laundry and even staff accommodation. Today, the outdoor seating area is a little smaller, but it is still huge, with capacity for around five hundred guests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, visited Hungary on just one occasion, in 1993. During the four days they spent here, they visited the Opera House, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Kecskem\u00e9t and Bugac. On 5 May, Prime Minister J\u00f3zsef Antall and his wife hosted a lunch in honour of the royal couple. The 32-person lunch, held at the Gundel restaurant, was reportedly the only occasion on which their own court chef did not cook for them whilst in Budapest. They set aside exactly 100 minutes for the lunch. The menu was handwritten, and the waiters were taught a special choreography. But even this could be taken a step further: a 1952 Tokaji Asz\u00fa was also served, the grapes for which had been harvested in the year the Queen ascended the throne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Gundel, of course, a special menu was put together in his honour, featuring pink-smoked salmon with white asparagus and a sage sauce, pigeon essence, braided veal fillet with Hungarian wild rice and morel mushrooms stuffed with goose liver, as well as strawberry tromp-l<\/em>\u2018\u0153il<\/em>\u00a0too. The dishes for the dinner were conceived by K\u00e1lm\u00e1n Kalla, Gundel\u2019s executive chef at the time. After 31 years, the restaurant has once again included the menu created for Queen Elizabeth II on its menu. The young chef at this prestigious establishment, Viktor Moldov\u00e1n, spent nearly twenty years in Japan, which is why he has a special flair for fish dishes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is said that there\u2019s no need to write the menu here; it\u2019s been set for 80 years. Obviously, that\u2019s not quite true, but there are 11 dishes you\u2019ll always find: Tokaji Asz\u00fa goose liver p\u00e2t\u00e9 with poppy seed bread, goulash soup, \u00dajh\u00e1zi chicken soup, Pal\u00f3c-style lamb soup, K\u00e1rp\u00e1ti pike-perch fillet with mushrooms and crayfish, paprika chicken with nokedli and cucumber salad with sour cream, Bakony sirloin, Viennese cutlet made from Mangalica pork, the original Gundel pancakes, Soml\u00f3i galuska, and R\u00e1k\u00f3czi cottage cheese with sour cream ice cream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The restaurant was nationalised in 1949. The family were evicted from the building and, because of their German origins, were even exiled to a farm in 1951. The restaurant only returned to private ownership after the fall of communism, and in 2006, during the tenure of the brilliant K\u00e1lm\u00e1n Kalla, Cond\u00e9 Nast Traveller ranked it among the world\u2019s top ten. It is now owned by Danubius Hotels, and since 2021 has been operated by the Eventrend Group, which also runs the Centr\u00e1lt and the New York K\u00e1v\u00e9h\u00e1z.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A building on the edge of V\u00e1rosliget.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":17978,"template":"","publikacio":[244],"class_list":["post-17979","sajto","type-sajto","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","publikacio-forbes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gundel.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sajto\/17979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gundel.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sajto"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gundel.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/sajto"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gundel.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sajto\/17979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gundel.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gundel.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"publikacio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gundel.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publikacio?post=17979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}