Pest Side Story: hanging out with the hipsters in the lesser known half of Budapest

Dipal Acharya soaks up history and hangs out with hipsters in Pest
Stunning views: Budapest and the Danube by night
Dipal Acharya27 March 2015

They say that Budapest is a city of two halves, with the Danube running like a seam between ancient Buda and modern Pest. It’s the former that tourists flock to, to visit the 13th-century Buda Castle perched like an old pasha on its citadel, but down in Pest the fabric of the city is just as rich.

A shame, really, that Wes Anderson decided not to film his oddball comedy The Grand Budapest Hotel here (he flew Monsieur Gustave and co to the German town of Görlitz), for there’s no shortage of them — the Art Nouveau Four Seasons and upmarket Corinthia are just two opulent examples. But in the grittier area of Józsefváros (formerly Pest’s red-light district) an arts and food scene is shaking things up.

At its centre is Brody House, a boutique guesthouse my boyfriend Manu and I checked into. A beautiful 19th-century townhouse, it was the Prime Minister’s residence in the early 1940s, but more recently served as a complex of artists’ studios before being renovated in 2009. Each of the 11 rooms is named after the artist who was its former occupant — ours was once home to Japanese painter Fukui Yusuki. The hotel also hosts regular exhibitions at sister site Brody Studios, Budapest’s answer to Soho House.

Striking decor: Brody Studios

We spent the morning navigating the neighbouring Jewish quarter on foot. This was one of the most bruised areas of Pest during the Second World War and the Soviet era — the nearby House of Terror museum is a sobering reminder of the thousands who suffered in those oppressive times — but walking along the main streets of Király and Dob utcas, you feel that the physical scars are beginning to fade.

The narrow streets are lined with home décor stores and coffee shops — for a bit of both head to Goamama, a favourite haunt for bourgeois bohemians. Behind the Moorish domes and towers of the Dohany Street synagogue — the largest in Europe and once the border of the Pest ghetto — there is a crop of romkocsma or ‘ruin pubs’. Ensconced in abandoned buildings, these makeshift bars have gained traction with out-of-towners thanks to a stellar offering of craft beers and street food. Our favourite was the colourful Ellátó Kert with its quirky quesadilla counter.

Kiosk in Budapest - in pictures

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When hungry in Hungary, there’s only one dish that comes to mind: goulash. We ordered the rich beef stew for lunch at Kiosk, a modern European diner in a former university theatre space, served with freshly baked sourdough. For pudding, we made a pilgrimage to the venerable Gerbeaud coffee house for a slice of Dobos cake. Five layers of sponge cake and chocolate buttercream later, it was off for a stroll along Andrassy Avenue, the city’s answer to Bond Street. While I window-shopped at Burberry and Louis Vuitton, Manu preferred to browse the shelves of the Alexandra bookshop. Its daily ‘book-and-bottle of Hungarian wine’ deals are hugely popular with locals — if only Waterstones would follow suit.

Hot stuff: the goulash at Kiosk

Our final rendezvous was at the State Opera House, outside which a statue to Hungary’s most celebrated composer and virtuoso pianist, Franz Liszt, has pride of place. Built in the late 1800s, the building’s grand façade is redolent of Vienna’s Staatsoper or Moscow’s Bolshoi. We booked seats to Madame Butterfly and spent the evening watching Gabriella Létay Kiss deliver a moving performance as Puccini’s tragic heroine.

Soon our stomachs were singing a chorus, too, so it was off for a late-night dinner at Mak, a modestly priced bistro behind the Gresham Palace. We spent our last florints on a meal of wild boar with potatoes, followed by a delicate white chocolate millefeuille. Happy as Habsburgs, we decided that grand old Buda could wait until next time; Pest had more than sated our appetites for one weekend.

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Double rooms at Brody House start from €70 per night (brodyhouse.com)

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