Usually in this space is a review about one of the established or up-and-coming restaurants that dot the capital. However, in this issue of Budapest Funzine, we decided to do things a little bit differently. Instead of our general top-down review-and-recommendation, we wanted to highlight an alternative way of going out to eat – the wine dinner.
While many of the city’s longer-term residents will have grown to know and love both Hungary’s excellent continental and international cuisine as well as it’s terrific offerings in terms of wine, the newcomer to the city may be a bit confused as to which regions of the country cultivate the best vineyards and which wineries produce the best wine. Even the most well-prepared traveler, having done their research in advance of their few days in Hungary, may not have the time to grasp and sample a good variety of the country’s vintages. And even Hungarians can’t always differentiate between “what’s good” and “what’s famous” in terms of wine.
Café Alibi, one of the country’s best coffeehouses known for its international outlook and friendly, capable service, has been addressing this need for some time, by offering a special evening of carefully chosen wines from a range of wineries and a range of international dishes to go alongside each one. During our visit, we had the pleasure of tasting wines by Miklós Csabi Winery and meeting the owner himself, who, along with Café Alibi owner László Vági, explained the history and development of his family’s 250-year-old wine cellars, as well as what to look for when tasting his wines.
To keep things unbiased, he also brought along several bottles from the Maurus Pince winery, a neighboring producer in the hilly, forested area about 90km from Budapest. And to top off this already-special gastronomic evening, the dinner menu was pescatarian (though vegetarian was written on the menu card), meaning that it contained only vegetable and seafood ingredients, with no meat or chicken. As a person who maintains such a diet, I was very happy to get a chance to participate in such a rare event.
You can go to Café Alibi any day of the week to enjoy great international food or one of the country’s best coffees, but this evening’s menu was truly special. After a short introduction by the owner and Mr. Miklós, the servers brought us the first wine of the evening (there were a total of seven), a Csibész Zöldveltelini 2006, followed closely by a fresh salad with grilled goat cheese, walnuts and olives. The semi-dry, lightly mouth-watering introductory wine went well with the light first course, complementing the slight bitterness of the walnuts and olives in particular. Once the patrons of the mostly-full closed event had finished with this course, Mr. Miklós asked for and responded to questions and comments.
Things for the next courses continued similarly, though after another three glasses of Móri Rajnai Rizling, Haramia Cuvée and Móri Tramini, respectively, conversation had gotten not a slight bit livelier, with patrons switching tables to make friends while the next course was prepared. Our dishes consisted of a very liberal interpretation of Japanese udon soup, an excellent entrée of grilled eggplant with sundried tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella, and steamed monkfish with a dahl-filled dosa.
As you can tell from the names, our dinner was a truly world-spanning selection, with Japanese and Indian accents to Mediterranean delights, making a nice break from heavy Hungarian cooking and complementing the selection of only white wines (Mr. Miklós explained that the Mór region is best suited to white grapes due to soil conditions and slightly lower average temperatures) in not always successful, but always interesting ways.
The crowning course was a Tagliatelle pasta with shrimp in a thankfully not-heavy gorgonzola sauce, accompanied by a semi-sweet Móri Cuvée that balanced the saltiness of the dish nicely. As a finale we enjoyed soymilk rice pudding with apples and real maple syrup, something I’ve never seen before in Budapest, accompanied by another semi-sweet Késői szüretelésű Ezerjó. After the meal Mr. Miklós surprised the already-happy group with a second dessert wine. All of the wines were from the year 2006.
While on this particular occasion the discussion and explanation of wines was in Hungarian, Mr. Vági has expressed an interest in providing a similar type of special event for English-speaking audiences, if sufficient interest can be generated. Feel free to contact him, in English or Hungarian, with inquires about the next upcoming wine dinner.
Words and photographs by Daniel Freeman
Café Alibi
1053 Budapest, Egyetem tér 4.
Tel.: +36.1.317.4209
