As we explore the intersection of gastronomy and literature, we\u2019ve had the opportunity to speak to a literary historian and a food journalist about our own culinary history. The series continues, and now we\u2019re taking a look into the bottom of the pot through the eyes of a Hungarian chef. We spoke to the head chef of Gundel Restaurant, the only restaurant to feature on the list of \u2018Hungarikums\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you think back to your childhood, what were the dishes that have stayed with you to this day?<\/strong> Gundel\u2019s primary aim is to keep our traditions and our Hungarian gastronomic heritage alive \u2013 just as it is for you, given that you are one of the restaurant\u2019s head chefs. I imagine you have no trouble identifying with this philosophy, as reconnecting with the past was already important to you before this. What expectations and objectives did you bring with you to the cradle of modern Hungarian cuisine?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I see gastronomy as a litmus test; it provides a very good reflection of our entire culture, and the majority of the dishes we now call \u2018Hungarian cuisine\u2019 were created in this very building. Of course, Hungarian cuisine existed before that, yet the work of K\u00e1roly Gundel and the Gundel restaurant represent a significant milestone in Hungarian gastronomic history. Incidentally, for K\u00e1roly Gundel, innovation was just as important as preserving tradition; for example, there were no sauces in Hungarian culinary culture, but K\u00e1roly Gundel was an admirer of Escoffier, so he attempted to incorporate the French culture of sauces into Hungarian traditions. At the same time, let\u2019s not forget that paprika chicken was also born here, and didn\u2019t come with us on horseback over the Hargita Pass. What is also very important is that the chef at Gundel does not serve his own interests for their own sake; rather, every member of staff at Gundel, including the head chef, serves the cause of Gundel. Here, we do not cook merely for its own sake, but with respect for our traditions, whilst also incorporating our own innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a very important underlying principle that Chef Viktor Moldov\u00e1n and I formulated even before we opened: we do not want to \u2018rethink\u2019 the dishes, but rather to \u2018reconsider\u2019 them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Words have power; it matters how we approach certain things, and, incidentally, this phrasing also adds much more nuance to our objectives. We consider how a dish could be improved and which ingredients are best suited to it; the Eventrend Group not only supports this approach but also expects us to adopt it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How interesting that K\u00e1roly Gundel introduced these culinary innovations even though he didn\u2019t actually cook himself.<\/strong> This is no coincidence, as Gundel is also renowned for having been a very family-oriented, hospitable restaurant. By \u2018family-centred\u2019, I mean, on the one hand, that K\u00e1roly Gundel himself had a large family, and, on the other hand, that visitors were treated almost as if they were members of the family.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The fundamental idea behind Gundel \u2013 which we also follow \u2013 is that Gundel belongs to everyone. Because, as you say, Gundel used to belong to everyone. The garden was divided into three sections: the first section served the cheaper dishes, and here \u2018cheap\u2019 certainly does not mean poor-quality food, but rather things like beer-battered doughnuts, sausages or scrambled eggs. Everything that ordinary servants could afford. Further in, the more expensive, fashionable dishes appeared. It\u2019s interesting, by the way, that cucumber was still considered a luxury dish back in the 1920s. That\u2019s because Bulgarian horticulture was only just getting started at that time, and it was considered very expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re no stranger to the world of fine dining; in fact, you\u2019re completely at home in it. Yet at Gundel, you don\u2019t take this approach. Are Hungarian gastronomy and fine dining two distinct genres?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not necessarily, but I think the main thing about a restaurant is that the food should be good. Of course, there are different categories of restaurant, but in reality, in every one \u2013 be it a l\u00e1ngos stall, a fine-dining restaurant or a bistro \u2013 there\u2019s only one thing to strive for: to bring out the very best in the dish in question. Gundel was essentially a garden restaurant, and preserving the character of this garden restaurant is part of upholding tradition \u2013 something that is incompatible with the fine dining style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1862, M\u00f3r J\u00f3kai issued a call to Hungarian housewives, asking them to write down and send him recipes for traditional Hungarian dishes. This was accompanied by a list of dish names, which did not include goulash or chicken paprikash \u2013 not even those \u2013 but did feature Transylvanian sauerkraut, dill flatbread, Kom\u00e1rom fish soup or, indeed, \u2018katak\u00f6ny\u00f6ke\u2019. Bori \u00c1cs attempted to bring these recipes to life The Forgotten Hungarian Cuisine<\/em> in her cookbook of the same name, which was published for this year\u2019s Book Week. Have you heard about this book? Do you think that a general familiarity with these recipes could offer new opportunities for strengthening and promoting Hungarian gastronomy?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The primary aim of gastronomy is to work with high-quality ingredients. That said, it\u2019s wonderful to see just how colourful Hungarian cuisine has been, even looking back. Back in the days of \u2018goulash communism\u2019 \u2013 as I call it \u2013 attempts were made to force Hungarian gastronomy into a centralised mould. Every restaurant served the same twenty or so dishes. Everywhere you\u2019d find pork shoulder Holstein-style with steamed rice, though we do feel that we\u2019ve never really been a rice-producing nation. Yet this still became part of our gastronomy, which I don\u2019t see as a problem, as the world is constantly changing. Pork consumption wasn\u2019t part of Hungarian gastronomy either, but there was a 150-year-long Turkish occupation, and they didn\u2019t eat pork, so that\u2019s what we were left with. But the message here isn\u2019t that we should now start raising pigs on a massive scale to return to the past; rather, we should make good use of these traditions, approaching them with good taste to create dishes through which we can showcase our culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201eEven haute cuisine is likely to become more relaxed and return to its roots. Without a past, there is simply no future; we can only build on the past, and we must not be ashamed of where we came from, of the environment in which we were brought up.\u201d If we apply this statement of yours to J\u00f3kai\u2019s list or Bori \u00c1cs\u2019s recipe book, what do you think Hungarian chefs and restaurants can do with this today? Is it possible to learn from and build upon these traditional Hungarian dishes?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s certainly a lot to be learnt from them, but I\u2019d like to approach this from a slightly different angle, and I\u2019m going to play devil\u2019s advocate for a moment; if you walked into a restaurant and, alongside a dish called \u2018katak\u00f6ny\u00f6ke\u2019, there was, say, goulash soup, which would you choose?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m sure you\u2019d be interested to know what that \u2018katak\u00f6ny\u00f6ke\u2019 might be.<\/strong> Other nations take much greater care to explore their own culinary history, yet we have no comprehensive account of our own. How keenly do you chefs feel the absence of this?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s actually quite a lot you can read up on. It\u2019s not just Hungarian restaurants \u2013 the world is wide open, and you can learn anywhere. Actually, education is the key issue, and I\u2019m no education expert, nor do I have any right to criticise the education system, but what I consider most important is knowledge of ingredients; without that, there is no real knowledge. It\u2019s no use giving someone a recipe; they won\u2019t necessarily be able to cook a meal from it. It\u2019s not the \u2018hows\u2019 that matter, but the \u2018whys\u2019. It\u2019s likely that we\u2019ll only be able to create truly good food from old recipes if we know the ingredients themselves. I also think it\u2019s important to emphasise that this is a practical profession: you have to taste, handle, chop, bite and crush \u2013 that\u2019s how you gain experiential knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How is the Hungarian farmers\u2019 market faring in terms of raw materials?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n People can go on and on about how bad it is, but I don\u2019t see it that way. Producers are also working very hard to produce ever-better raw materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I always use English lawns as an example: they\u2019re so beautiful and green because they\u2019ve been watered and mown for five hundred years. We need the same thing, and this is where the chefs\u2019 responsibility comes in: if we find a really good ingredient, it is our responsibility to support the producers by buying it on a regular basis.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Another important point is that there\u2019s no need to constantly change the menu; rather, if you have good quality ingredients, you should use them in accordance with the season. After all, sustainability is also very important in gastronomy, and seasonality \u2013 if we follow it \u2013 actually achieves this. If we pay attention to these things and support our producers, we too will gradually become like an English lawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019re in the grip of Euro fever, so let\u2019s talk a bit about the national team. Or rather, the Gundel team. What are their chances, and how would Hungarian dishes fare at the World Gastronomy Championships?<\/strong> Who is Gundel\u2019s primary target audience? Foreign guests or Hungarian guests?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Foreign and Hungarian guests are equally important,<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Hungarian guests perhaps hold a special place in this respect, in that we can only properly pass on our traditions and gastronomy if we, as Hungarians, also contribute to this. Not to mention that a Hungarian guest has memories of these dishes, has a basis for comparison, and if the food we prepare can evoke a memory in them, then I think we\u2019re doing our job well.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We spoke to the head chef at Gundel Restaurant, the only catering establishment featured on the list of \u2018Hungarikums\u2019.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":17981,"template":"","publikacio":[191],"class_list":["post-17982","sajto","type-sajto","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","publikacio-kultura-hu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gundel.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sajto\/17982","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\/17982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gundel.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gundel.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"publikacio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gundel.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publikacio?post=17982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The best way to start cooking well is to draw on your memories. We always build on what we bring with us from home or from our childhood, and these taste experiences have a huge influence on our future work as well. My grandmother, for example, used to cook very sweet dishes \u2013 I\u2019m sure everyone understands what I mean. So in our household, for instance, pumpkin stew and pea stew were sweet. Although these dishes can be prepared in countless ways, in our family sweetness was part of our meals, and that\u2019s why I, too, tend to cook with a sweeter touch. In our household, we didn\u2019t serve pickles with roast meat, but compote, and all these experiences shape the way we think about gastronomy. At the same time, I was lucky because my parents and I used to go to restaurants very often, so I had the chance to try a wider variety of dishes, not just the usual ten to fifteen types of food that are generally prepared at home, so I became much more open-minded about gastronomy. Nevertheless, I\u2019m not the classic chef who, watching over his grandmother\u2019s shoulder, already knew he wanted to be a chef; it simply turned out this way, and I\u2019m very grateful to fate that I found my calling straight away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Yes, because he was not primarily a chef, but a restaurant manager. At the same time, it is also very interesting that, historically speaking, it was not necessarily him who ran the Gundel restaurant, but his wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is undoubtedly a very small group of people who would be keen to try these things, and I agree that we need to nurture them \u2013 but this is a long-term endeavour. Our job is to filter out what we can actually use from this, because for us chefs, the guest\u2019s needs are the most important thing. You can\u2019t run a restaurant just for its own sake. That said, I\u2019m very curious about the recipes mentioned; we\u2019ve also been experimenting in this way, trying to reconstruct long-forgotten dishes. That is precisely why I\u2019d love to have a chat with the author, as he probably has far more experience in this area. Indeed, we could perhaps even organise a dinner to showcase these dishes \u2013 after all, what better venue for this than Gundel? At the same time, we\u2019re not only involved in running Gundel, but also the New York Caf\u00e9, where gastronomy and history \u2013 just as much as gastronomy and literature \u2013 have now become completely intertwined. It was there, too, that famous dishes were created, which, sadly, have since fallen into oblivion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
If we look at the Bocuse d\u2019Or, it ranks quite highly. Of course, there are far more popular cuisines, and there are many reasons for that. Nevertheless, I believe that anyone encountering Hungarian gastronomy for the first time, tasting Hungarian dishes for the first time, would not rank it very low in this imaginary competition. And I also hope that if a foreign guest comes here and wants to discover Hungarian gastronomy, Gundel will be among their top priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n