Onyx, the restaurant gem in the Gerbeaud crown, has been consistently impressing visitors with world-class cuisine in a world-class setting for a year and a half. But during that time, the chefs at Onyx have been studying and sampling, concocting and crafting, and basically, starting a revolution. Here at home, in the world of Hungarian cuisine.Onyx introduces something extraordinary, a marriage of traditional Hungarian cuisine with the newest in culinary techniques. It’s called the Hungarian Evolution menu, a five-course journey through familiar and unfamiliar territory.
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In the minds of Hungarians, many of these dishes conjure up memories of the comforting favorites served at Grandma’s house on Sunday. But these aren’t Grandma’s recipes. Let’s begin, as I did, with the Onyx’s goose liver appetizer, layered so beautifully as to look like the Dobos torte in the window of the Gerbeaud patisserie next door. In fact, it is a melt-in-your-mouth goose liver pâté on a soft ‘crust’ of homemade green walnut, topped with an apple jelly crystallized into a top resembling that of a crème brulée.
Next comes a “goulash soup,” in quotation marks even on the menu, because this is like no goulash you’ve ever seen. First there’s garlic, slightly sweetened, baked in its skin in foil until it becomes creamy, and vegetables and parsley. The beef is a cut from the neck, prepared in a vacuum at 58°C, accompanied by a sweet paprika puree. Then the waiter pours a concentrated consommé over the top.
Pike perch is one of the best fish to be found in Hungary, and Onyx chefs Szabina Szulló and Tamás Széll have transformed it with new confit techniques that render it more succulent than ever. It is served with a gourmet lecsó made with homemade tomato puree and roasted peppers for a more intense flavor.
The crowning glory is a Mangaliza and suckling pig platter. Roasted cheek prepared with vacuum techniques that keep the meat’s color but soften it, ravioli filled with pork lung and topped with crushed pumpkin seeds, a mini blood sausage prepared with apple and bread, and a főzelék, a unique Hungarian cross between a soup and a puree, made of savoy cabbage.
The menu finishes with a new twist on Somló sponge cake. Chocolate cream upon vanilla cream upon chocolate-soaked ladyfingers upon honey-walnut cream, topped with crunchy walnut streusel…
Hungarians know how to start revolutions. Experience this culinary one.
1051 Budapest, Vörösmarty tér 7-8.
Tel.: +36.1.429.9023