The six-year-old girl who lives deep in my soul was really looking forward to going to my birthday party, because there was nothing more wonderful in her eyes than a little sack of potatoes, the smells wafting down Vassie Street at Christmas, and the gift of a Lion King figurine that… It can spin when we pull it by its tail.
I’m not alone in the editorial staff, the biggest dream of most of my colleagues who grew up in the countryside is to eat at Miki’s Restaurant in Budapest. “I imagined something really special would happen at Mickey, say there would be a cowboy or an Indian,” one said. But then “those fries were really good, but not as good as my grandmother’s fries.” Another was so happy that he finally made it to the fast food restaurant from far away, where he took a sandwich home with him in his bag. For many of them, Meki on Nyugati tér was the greatest experience, as those who arrived in Pest took the train directly to it, so they thought it was the miracle of the big city.
When the fast food chain appeared in Hungary, it meant something different to us Hungarians than it originally meant in America: it was not a simple quick fix, but rather luxury, the West itself, and the fall of the Iron Curtain. Anyone who still remembers the early McDonald’s era probably remembers it as the miracle of luxury, the expensive thing that mothers had no money for, and thus an eternal desire that could not be fulfilled in itself. Achieving this is sometimes disappointing: “In 1989, even a Big Mac seemed expensive, I stuffed it and went home hungry,” said one of our colleagues. Mek fever is still alive in others: “I couldn’t imagine anything tastier than mek food, and I decided that when I grew up, I would eat there every day. That’s how it happened.”
The renovated downtown unit, which will officially reopen on October 21 at 1 p.m. Araníquez Street bombing comes to mind. “I took my mom on a long errand, and because I was behaving, she promised to go to McDonald’s afterward. I had a hard time waiting, and kept thinking about the kids’ menu, but when we finally got there, all we saw were police and cordons, and I didn’t get a burger.” “With cheese.”
Oops, there’s caramel ice cream sauce under the fancy pistachio frosting! – Photo: Bori Ács / Telex
In the past 35 years, menus have gradually become more affordable, and therefore more ordinary, and we even manage to get at least one ice cream from our pocket money, but at the same time, its luster has also faded, and many consider it cheesy and plastic. Then came the artisanal hamburger revolution, which did not make any significant impact during Mickey’s era, as it was still much cheaper than restaurant sandwiches. This has changed again with the economic crises of recent years, as it is no longer much cheaper, but the usual artificial taste – which many people love – remains.
Now, the company will bring back the luxurious Meki experience of 35 years ago with a bright and manicured Régi Posta utca store. Visible copper and concrete, where you can also see traces of sesame seeds, between the leather seats and shiny mirrors, it will be possible to cover the puris, the sub-contrasale, the tatakabok, and the dances, as Belga sang.
At the party before the opening, everything was like that Welfare, the Quality And the beloved Passwords were used, and the menu was prepared by Jenő Rácz, the well-known star chef from television. Chef’s co-host Zevel Fordus began the evening by saying, “We’re so close that in the Chef’s Chef final, when the contestants are nervous, we usually submit requests. But don’t tell anyone!”
The advertisement stated that the chef will prepare dishes from local dish ingredients. Recently, since chefs have become celebrities, the Internet has also become full of similar challenges, where they prepare fast food in an elegant way. Here, for example The chef carved gnocchi from French fries and ragout from meatloaf. Genre-mixing fashions are also on the rise, with the world’s top restaurants preparing ridiculous take-aways from fast food, and cold chicken wings and hamburgers have already appeared on star-studded menus. (We talked about this topic in more detail in the next broadcast of our izspokozó podcast.)
While I was waiting for dinner, I envisioned a sumptuous menu: fat-marbled Japanese beef that had been fried and then roasted over an open flame, stuffed in artisanal Super Brio, the finest farm-raised potatoes, cooked with various… potato. Special techniques, shocked and fried in delicious fat, but I got something completely different: a little luxury, granted by ingredients that, no matter how much they put on the plate, suggest wealth, but not the feeling that made my heart beat when I smelled potatoes after kindergarten. Let’s take a look at the list!
Cod tart brandade, trout caviar: The appetizer was cream fish with caviar in a crispy basket under a small edible plastic dome. In this dish, Jenő Rácz thought of a Miec fish sandwich, even adding cream-shaped fries to the ingredients. Cold jelly, flavor of canned fish with mayonnaise, with the memory of fish in a cold dish. A lot of people around me got five or six of them.
Foie gras, apple and beetroot sauce: The appetizer refers to the seasonal goose sandwich, which is not available at Mickey’s this year. Anyway, the foie gras was perfectly prepared, topped with a sauce made from Mickey’s apple pie filling, which wasn’t really spicy, just sweet, with pink meringue cubes and purple flowers on top, a sauce reminiscent of barbecue sauce and some beetroot puree but unfortunately I couldn’t eat it with a fork. He could have done with more truffles.
Glazed chicken breast, confit celery, fried onions, hazelnuts: The technical terminology is deceptive here too, as the chef himself stated that he roasted the celery over charcoal, while the menu mentioned confit (slow heat processing in fat), but none of it appears during consumption, but it does have mayonnaise, which gives it a slightly Big Mac taste, And the hazelnuts used in ice cream, which no one would think would have a place on chicken, because we also eat potatoes with ice cream. There was also a thin, crispy hamburger bun on the plate as a nod to the burger. The chicken was cylindrical with sauce. It doesn’t matter what the glaze means, Zee Fordus said into the microphone.
Our representative finger is pistachio and caramel. Small burnt dough balls with pistachio cream, mix ice cream and caramel sauce. Things could have gone well with Hasaburi.
My six-year-old remained hungry until the end of the menu, but the well-dressed guests seated around me, who could have had this dinner on their fifty cheeseburger menu, photographed the refined dishes with due respect. However, on my way out, I carefully touched the giant order boards in the middle of the new store, to see if the clown would jump off them with my fries, but they looked back at me from their sleek copper-and-concrete mirrored faces. .
