No new posts
since February is a record hiatus for this blog, but I have an excuse. There
was a worldwide pandemic going on.. It is not that I didn’t want to write about
it, but the Apocalypse can be distracting, and with so many writers busy with
the same topic I felt others did it better. (Incidentally, that is the same
excuse I give for why I don’t play bluegrass banjo.) I consider myself lucky
that I left New York and returned to Budapest in mid February, just
before the virus hit New York and Europe in full force. East Europe, for many
reasons, managed to avoid the horrific death tolls seen in Italy, Spain, and
ferchrissakes, the USA. Also, the covid-19 crisis in Hungary was a driving
reason that Our Great Leader (May the Good Lord grant his favorite football
teams victory) was voted emergency powers that some less forgiving (or more
sentient) have likened to a dictatorship. One of those emergency powers is
aimed at freedom of the press, particularly opposition bloggers and Facebook
posters, some of whom have found the police knocking on their doors at dawn and a big black police car waiting outdoors.
Lockdown Order extended... |
The official explanation for this is
to prevent the spread of misleading news about covid-19. And therefor I decided
that I will not spread any misleading news. Given the prevailing atmosphere, I
wouldn’t spread anything at all, viral or verbal. Hungarians are keenly
apprehensive about what “outsiders” have to say about them, and foreign
journalists regularly receive hyper-nationalistic complaints from various Local Lilliputian
Mugwumps accusing them of “misrepresenting Hungary” … the problem is that now
these have the force of law behind them. So, instead no opinion will be
offered, unless you can find a way to buy me a socially distanced beer and
listen to me complain in person from across a large picnic table. That said, I was
stuck alone in our flat for three months, not venturing farther than our local market across the square. During this time I collected, and froze, a decent percentage of Hungary's spring strawberry crop. Unlike most years, there were almost no imported strawberries for sale in our local markets, which is not a bad thing. Hungarian strawberries are fantastic at their seasonal best.
r |
May in Hungary: all local strawberries |
Budapest is quickly getting
back to normal, faster than I feel comfortable with. My district, which is both
the Jewish Ghetto and the hyper-touristic “party district” is beginning to get
a night life back, although I am not about to go out and enjoy a beer in public
anytime soon. The Covid-19 virus seems specifically designed to seek me out and kill me. I tick off lots
of the boxes for “Face certain death, Earthling!” so I have been safely cowering up in
my third floor Fortress of Solitude, venturing out only to shop at our local
market.
On a much sadder note, among the casualties in the restaurant business
is the best damn Hungarian restaurant I know of, Kadar’s Etkezde. Sometime
around mid April a sign appeared on the Kadar announcing “For Sale”. This is
not a minor event. This means that there is no longer any restaurant in
Budapest that I can suggest to visitors looking for an authentic, home style
Hungarian meal of any quality. My guess is that the owner and staff decided
that rather than pay the overhead on the closed lunch spot they could just put
the place up for sale and retire.
The $5 goose Happy Meal -the Wednesday Special - packed to go. |
I will sorely miss their Wednesday goose
risotto, which we used to order for take out, allowing them to pack an
unsightly huge half goose carcass and three fat wings on top of a huge portion
of rice pilaf for FT 1500 (USD $5.00) Once we got it home I would strip the meat from the goose carcasses and it was well enough to make an another batch of goose risotto. I will also miss their sólet, the Hungarian
Jewish version of the Yiddish cholent, which was the house specialty and the
reason the Kadar was first opened in the 1950s and allowed to function as a
private restaurant under Communism, in order to serve the hungry Jewish
comrades working in the neighborhood who missed the comforts of old style Hungarian Jewish food, but didn't mind it being served next to a pork chop just in case any of the Marxist fundamentalists at work were interested in ratting on their Semitic comrades.
Roast Goose Leg with Sólet |
They used the breast meat from those
goose carcasses for the goose meat loaf they served with the sólet, and the
legs went with either sólet or braised red cabbage. The rest - carcasses and wings - went into the risotto, or more precisely, the pilaf. In Hungarian Jewish cooking goose replaces the role that pork has in Hungarian cooking. It provides meat, cooking fat, and soup stock, and until recently you could get amazing goose salami at the Orthodox kosher butchers shop on Dob utca down the street. Now I honestly can’t tell
you where to go for home style goose meat anymore. I am sure you can find
Hungarian Jewish sólet on some other menu in Budapest – it just won’t be from a
specialist who has fifty years of experience in the genuine product.
Goose meat loaf and sólet, also more food. |
Kadar fell into a beloved, and rapidly
disappearing category: the non-Kosher Jewish restaurant. Most of my favorite
places are "treyfeterias": Katz’s in NYC, Hobby’s in Newark, Chez
Schwartz’ in Montreal. You can’t usually get ham in these places, but they will
serve meat with cheese or sour cream. It weeds out the Glatt Kosher Orthos, but
allows less fastidious Jews some sense of culinary safety. In places like new
York, this cuts out a large segment of the Jewish customer base who still
require strictly kosher food when out of the house. And kosher meals are
usually at a premium price range – this killed the traditional cheap lunch at New
York delicatessens in the 1970s, as more people adopted the stricter Hasidic “Glatt
Kosher” rules and deli prices rocketed. But there will always be an attraction
for non-kosher “Jewish style” deli food. Nobody eats a Rueben sandwich because it
tastes good… they eat it because it is a corned beef sandwich with sauerkraut
and cheese on it. It has no tradition. Pastrami, now that carries tradition.
In our family, clams have tradition. When I was 12 my father took me out to
City Island, the fishing hamlet located at the tip of the Bronx, and introduced
me to clams on the half shell.
Mamaliga and raw clams, a meal unknown in traditional Romanian Jewish cuisine. |
I believe that original clamfest was intended as a guarantee that I should
never wear the culinary shackles of the Jewish Religion. No practicing Jew in his right mind would ever eat a live
clam. A shrimp, maybe, hidden inside Chinese fried rice… but a clam? The only
thing less kosher would be rabbit, or suckling pig in its mother’s milk. Since then clams have become a generational
ritual in the family: my son, born in land locked Hungary, started wolfing down
live bivalves when he was nine. I buy the clams at the Korean supermarket for dirt cheap - one can get a dozen for what you would spend on two clams in a restaurant. And then I shuck them, a technique that takes skill but all of my fingers are still attached to my hand, so I am doing something right. And my Dad is still eating those babies... my brother fed him oysters for his 94th birthday on June 20. The Old Man is still going strong. So Happy Fathers Day, Dad, and we still have dozens of clams to go.
5 comments:
Each time I walk past, I hope it will soon reopen, while waiting for a buyer. I've never been anywhere like it. At the moment, sitting at the tables with red and white checked tablecloths outside the Rakoczi vendeglo is some comfort, as it is a nice, unchanged, simple place. But the amazing food and the eccentricity of the Kadar are irreplaceable.
My God, I'd have to be terminally starving to put a clam (live or otherwise) into my mouth!
Bon appetit brother!
Not sure how to get in touch other than here, but just wanted to let you know...
You may vaguely remember me, I was a fellow blogger in Magyaristan (in Székelyföld to be precise), for a number of years, until lapsing (the blogging, not the residency). I always enjoyed your blog and learned of things like the Negreni fair through you.
Anyway, was idly browsing netflix yesterday and thought that Soul Exodus sounded interesting so I put it on. About 15 minutes in I suddenly realised that you were you, if you see what I mean. I loved the film, and the way that the 5 of you muse on identity. Anyway, glad to hear that you're well and still playing, eating, staying safe, and living with such joie de vivre.
Cheers!
Thanks, Andy. I have missed your blog - not many hearty opinionators out of Transylvania these days.
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