Vegetarian offerings in Hungary are slimmer than a supermodel’s thighs, so coming across Veggie Express in the heart of the city is the sort of wonderful experience that makes a vegetarian drop their shopping bags or Blackberry in uncontained meat-free glee.
Imagine the situation: You’ve come out of a meeting, you’ve got just a short amount of time to refill, refresh and prepare for the next one. You’re a vegetarian (or just someone that doesn’t fancy a hunk of flesh today) and you weigh up the options: tourist pap (expensive, slow, depressing) or fast food’s golden arches (heart attack-inducing, offensively bright lights). Before Veggie Express came along you’d have gone into the next meeting in a hungry angry mood, lost the deal you were trying to clinch, consequently lost your job, which in turn led to the break-up of your marriage and one year later you’d be harassing the tourists for their loose change outside the aforementioned “restaurants.”
Thankfully now it won’t happen. Entering the bright oasis of this self-service restaurant is surprising in a number of ways. Firstly, the cold food is cold and the hot food is hot, something which although remarkably simple, many other self-service restaurants fail to do. Picking up your tray you face a choice from a selection of freshly pressed fruit and vegetable drinks for your parched throat and various salads and soups for your rumbling belly.
Many of main dishes utilize meat substitutes, to offer dishes that us veggies in Budapest previously missed out on, as well as offering purely vegetable-based dishes. There are baked offerings, as well as pasta and stews (the pickled cabbage is recommended). There is also a wide range of sides to go with your selection. The choice of desserts is impressive and, unlike in other fast food joints, their creations do not contain coloring or flavor-intensifying agents, additives or preservatives. Healthy and scrumptious! Don’t worry, there are also plenty of vegan offerings for those who’ve taken that extra step.
You pay for most of the food by weight, so you can judge how much you want and consequently don’t waste food. Every dish is labeled in English, making asking for stuff from the English-speaking staff as easy as veggie-pie. If you miss out Veggie Express from your Váci utca shopping trip, then you deserve to be turned into a burger…
Veggie Express Restaurant
1051 Budapest, Kristóf tér 3. (close to Váci utca)
Open: Mon.-Fri. 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m; Sat. closed; Sun. 11:30 a.m.-6 p.m.
Tel.: +36.20.775.1162