Food & Drink

Hungarian food is often spicy. It frequently uses paprika, black pepper and onions. Potatoes are also commonly used in many dishes. Hungarians are passionate about their soups, desserts and stuffed pancakes, with fierce rivalries between regional variations of the same dish. Sweet pastries and gundel palacsinta (pancakes) are also popular.

Hungarian Meals

In Hungary, breakfast may consist of fresh bread, fruit, vegetables or cereal. Lunch is the major meal of the day, usually with several courses: soup is followed by a main dish including meat, which precedes a dessert. Fruit may follow. Dinner is a far less significant meal than lunch. It may be similar to breakfast, with bread and vegetables, or perhaps a bowl of soup, and usually consists of only one course.

Typical Hungarian Dishes

• Dobos torta (sponge cake layered with chocolate paste and glazed with caramel and nuts)
• Galuska (noodles)
• Goulash (or gulyásleves) (a typical Hungarian soup, made of beef, paprika and various other ingredients - note that in Hungary, unlike other countries, goulash is a soup, not a stew)
• Halászlé (fish soup with paprika)
• Hideg meggyleves - chilled sour cherry soup
• Hurka (2 types: májas hurka made with liver and rice, and véres hurka which is blood sausage)
• Húsleves (meat soup)
• Lángos - flat fried bread
• Lecsó - vegetable stew
• Palacsinta (stuffed pancake), especially Hortobágy palacsinta filled with veal
• Pecsenye - a thin pork steak served with cabbage
• Pogácsa - round puffed pastry, traditionally cooked on the fire.
• Pörkölt (meat stew - this dish resembles the goulash eaten in other countries)
• Töltött káposzta (stuffed cabbage)
• Vaníliás kifli (vanilla croissant)

Drinks

Try Tokaji a strong dessert wine and Bull's Blood, a strong red wine. Apricot brandy, barack, is typical of the region.