Budai Gourmet Festival

The Budai Gourmet Festival in Budapest (Millenaris Park) is organized by Sziget.hu, the company organizing the Sziget Festival, Balaton Sound and the Volt Festival in Sopron as well. So it is ensured that this festival is professionally organized maybe even a bit too professional in my opinion. For the relativly high entrance fee of 2.900 HUF you are equipped with a wine glass and a payment card (based on NFC -Near Field Communication technology) in order to make your payments at the stands. This payment method seems to be very popular nowadays among festivals in Budapest, this was the case at the Pálinka Festival already, and the card will be valid for the Balaton Sound, Sziget Festival as well as the Volt Festival as well. OK, enough talk about the organizational issues, let’s jump into what the Budai Gourmet Festival has to offer in terms of Gourmet.

Basically the festival is built up on 3 types of stands: Wine and Pálinka producers, gourmet stores and resturants in Budapest.

Wine and Pálinka

The wine and Pálinka part to be honest is more or less the same as what you get at the dedicated Budapest Wine Festival and the Pálinka Festival so you have well known brands such as Rázangyal Pálinka, Bock Wine, Duzsi Tamás from Szekszárd and so on. So compared to the Wine / Pálinka Festival you will not get any benefit though it is always good to have good wine and pálinka on such a fetival an the Hungarian wine is quite good. Anyways you will get the typical tasting of different producers just in case you are interested in products like this.

Budapest Gourmet Stores

This part of the Budai Gourmet Festival was actually the most interesting since it is not too easy to find gourmet stores in Budapest apart from the well known such as Culinaris or the ones I wrote about already like for example Villa Bagatelle. But as I found out there is far more to discover in terms of gourmet stores in Budapest and other shops dealing just with good food, spices and traditions from around the world. There is for example a cooking school called ChefParade which gives courses in cooking exotic dishes from Thailand, Mexico or mainly for foreigners Hungary. Also I discovered a Spanish shop, which unfortunately does not have any website to link to, which sells Spanish sausage, ham, wine and much more. So you don’t always need to run to restaurant Pata Negra in Budapest to get your Tapas. So all these gourmet stores were present on the Budai Gourmet Festival and showed their products and gave bits and pieces to taste.

Restaurants

As you know I am writing quite much about restaurants in Budapest so this part was not too exciting for me, nevertheless there were some restaurants which I have not heard off and some which I have heard off a lot but never made it to go there such as Nobu, the newly opened restaurant in Hotel Kempinski. The restaurants offered a small range of really impressive creations that you could try for fairly high prices but that is normal for a festival like that so I tried only a few things and definitely I have some more restaurants on my “To Go” list for the coming weeks and months. One highlight was for sure the Café Dérnyé which I wrote a review about some time ago and all I wrote was about having a good breakfast, which is still true due to the fabolous bread they have, but I will for sure revisit the restaurant for a good dinner.

That’s it for the culinary part of the festival. Additionally I have to say that the flair and atmosphere on the festival was extremely nice, I felt like on a small holiday for the few hours I have been there. Due to this atmosphere with live music, the good weather and much more it made the festival also extremly children friendly so it is a good place to go as a family as well. Overall I can just recommend the Budai Gourmet Festival in Budapest to taste things from around the world, discover the gourmet corner of Budapest and try Hungarian products in one go.

Budai Gourmet Festival Information

For more information you should visit the website and for impressions I recommend to have a look in the galleries on their Facebook page. In both channels you will be kept informed about the next festival.

TRADITIONAL THAI MASSAGE

30 min. – 4800 Ft.
60 min. – 7600 Ft.
90 min. – 9100 Ft.
120 min. – 11400 Ft.

THAI OIL MASSAGE (AROMATHERAPY)

30 min. – 5200 Ft.
60 min. – 9200 Ft.
90 min. – 11000 Ft.
120 min. – 13800 Ft.

FOUR HANDS MASSAGE

30 min. – 8500 Ft.
60 min. – 11800 Ft.
90 min. – 13600 Ft.
120 min. – 17000 Ft.

STEAMED HERBAL MASSAGE FOR BODY

30 min. – 5200 Ft.
60 min. – 9200 Ft.
90 min. – 11000 Ft.

ORIENTAL FOOT MASSAGE (REFLEXOLOGY)

15 min. – 2900 Ft.
30 min. – 4200 Ft.
60 min. – 5700 Ft.
90 min. – 7300 Ft.

FULL LEG MASSAGE

45 min. – 6000 Ft.
60 min. – 7000 Ft.
90 min. – 8500 Ft.

HEAD, NECK AND SHOULDERS MASSAGE

15 min. – 3100 Ft.
30 min. – 4800 Ft.

FOOT SPA

(herbal bath + herbal scrub + massage + herbal mask + herbal lotion)
80 min. – 9500 Ft.

BODY SPA TREATMENT

(herbal scrub + Thai oil massage + herbal mask + herbal lotion)
120 min. – 18000 Ft.

BODY SCRUB/POLISH

(Thai herbs + herbal lotion)
50 min. – 8000 Ft.

CELLULITE PROGRAMM

(cellulite herbs + cellulite cream)
30 min. – 5900 Ft
60 min. – 10.300 Ft

You also can buy packages of different massages which include different elements of the above programs. It is definetly better to get an appointment in advance espescially in the time after work. If you want to give away a massage as a present you can do it you even get 10% off.

Address:
MOM Park Lakópark building 5
Tel.: (06) 30 245 – 7933
Or visit the website.
Opening hours: Daily 10.00 – 22.00

To find out more about Thai Massages in Budapest you can visit a website dedicated to Thai Massage called ThaiMassageBudapest.net.

I would describe the holdudvar as an open air bar, restaurant and party place (thursday till saturday). During the day you can eat and discuss while at night you can dance, listen to music and drink. I have to admit that at the moment Holdudvar is my favourite place to be. I was working a bit from here while having a beer and listening to some music in the backgroung.

In Holdudvar the prices are average for Budapest level so you pay 550 HUF for a beer (Becks) which is around 2,20€ or around 5€ for a decent cocktail. The place itself is built upon an old Casino which used to be on the Margit island and includes a massive outside area with several bars, table tennis, csocsó tables (table football) ad much more. At night the fantastic lights of Holdudvar are shining, the Pálinka bar is open and you can dance inside.

By the way, I just checked for “Holdudvar Budapest” in Google and I realized that there is a GOogle maps apearing in first place, showing Holdudvar still on Múseum Körút 8 which is the old place of Holdudvar when it used to be in the university. Great times but over Google it is now on Margit island.