Dinner followed by Ruin

Taking up a recommendation from our walking tour guide, we had booked a table for dinner at Kiosk Budapest (https://www.kiosk-budapest.hu/en/a-la-carte), a trendy modern Hungarian bistro back in Pest. The food was delicious as you can see from the photos!

The restaurant is in the former building of the Piarist Gymnasium, the first secondary school in Budapest, founded by the Piarist Catholic order in the early 18th century at the dawn of the Enlightenment and which continues to operate today. The building is just behind the Március 15. tér (15 March Square) which commemorates the location where the leaders of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution announced their list of 12 demands on 15 March 1848.

The square was also the site of the Roman Legion II’s outpost Contra Aquincum in the 40s and 50s (AD), who fought the Hungarian pagan tribes nearby, hence the sculpture “Barbarians Fight with Romans” in the square.

After dinner, we caught a bus back to Erzsébetváros (Elizabeth district) or the Jewish quarter, in order to find Lampas, a “ruin bar” once again recommended by our guide this morning.

Ruin Bars (or romkocsma) are bars, located in old, abandoned buildings filled with eclectic furniture. Much of the Jewish quarter had become dilapidated and abandoned after the ravages of the WW2 and the Cold War. In the early 2000s some young entrepreneurs began to acquire some of the so-called ruined buildings and courtyards, where rents were v cheap, in order to open a series of quirky, hip establishments filled with furniture from a flea market, where you can buy a drink at a reasonable price and enjoy live music and culture.Read more