budaveg – vegetarian Hungary your vegetarian home in Hungary

When I was a bright eyed bushy tailed student I dreamt about working for an ethical business, in 2002 I came home from Denmark where I studied environmental studies and looked for jobs  in the sector. Not much luck there. Soon I realized that I should create my own job if want to work for a vegetarian company and in 2003 with the help of a vegetarian webwizard we started budaveg.

We had a lovely time during these years met people from all the continents, all vegetarian and all super nice, didn’t have one bad experience! It was a pleasure to meet, greet and show people around, and even go out with them to the many veggie restaurants Budapest has to offer.

But times are changing, and James’s parents are getting old and need daily help so we have decided to move back to the UK and thus will be unable to run our B&B. But we hope you will!

Budaveg is for sale! Budaveg is a well established site, with two excellent domains (budaveg.com and vegetarianhungary.com) with an average 260 visitors/ over 1000 hits a day, 220 subscribers (and we get roughly a new subscriber per week). We have a  a very neat multilingual wordpress powered website, in English, German, Dutch, Italian and Danish a well designed attractive logo, and an active presence on other social media: 3 films on you tube, twitter fans, 243 fans on Facebook and massive collection of quality photos on flickr.

Budaveg is extremely well linked and our SEO is brilliant, if you put “budaveg” in google we come up first, if you put “vegetarian apartment Budapest”  we come first too!

It is possible to buy or rent the budaveg apartment too but basically it can be run in any decent downtown apartment and is a big fish in a little pond. While the vegetarian community is made up of a small percentage of the world’s tourists, the community is growing every day and includes individuals from all walks of life. Budaveg’s customer base includes diverse groups from vegan hunt subs to young families who appreciate the family friendliness of the flat and Budapest in general.

We would love to find buyers who could take Budaveg to the next level and continue to provide a vegetarian apartment to the veggie visitors of Budapest.

Competition: Budaveg is unique and there is no other veggie B&B or apartment in Budapest. We are also the only one providing detailed and up-to-date info on vegetarian restaurants in English which guarantees the daily traffic, and our free e-book brings us a growing number of subscribers.

Growth/Expansion: Both the vegetarian community and self catering holidays are on the increase, budaveg  is exceptionally well placed in search engines and the vegetarian cyber sphere. Budaveg would be well suited to expand into an incoming tourism business, a vegetarian or organic themed hotel or offer advertising to the local vegetarian or tourism businesses. Our long term plan was to start up a boutique hotel and a retreat in the beautiful Hungarian countryside.

Support/Training: 10 hours training offered  for the website, blogging, managing social media, taking and managing inquiries and general questions regarding incoming tourism. I am happy to provide support on email for 6 weeks after the takeover and we have a super friendly wordpress expert who can give advice for a very reasonable price.

Budaveg can easily be run as a part time job, or buy a mum on maternity leave, you only need a little daily attention to check emails and update the blog/facebook! Our guests have been a pleasure to be with, it is a real joy to run a veggie B&B!

We are receiving inquires every week and so far I had to turn down 4 for this year already, I really hope somebody can take over the business as soon as possible.

We are selling budaveg at almost a cost price:  please call or email if you are interested and I am sure we can work out a deal that benefit us both!

Till than we will continue to blog and update the website and our Facebook page to serve the English speaking vegetarian fans of Budapest.

Thank you for staying with us and supporting a vegetarian business and family!

with much love,

Zsofi, James, Hannah, Eva and Oliver

A short walk from the körút and Blaha Lujza tér, you’ll find the newest veggie eatery in an Indian cultural centre. It is in a small street just off Almássy tér.

The staff were very kind and welcoming and explained our choices: normally they have a soup,  one or two subjis, rice, pakoras, a Hungarian dish, a salad and cakes. You can buy a meal or set menus, raging from student (small 630 Hufs) to maharaja (everything they have for 1980 Hufs). Most dishes are lacto vegetarian, but there are always vegan options. Interestingly when we were there everything was vegan!

We had chickpea soup with peanuts, aubergine subji with rice and salad, small veggie burgers and pakoras on a skewer. I really loved the soup and the pakoras, so much that I bought a couple more to take home for the children.

This is the “bharata menu” and pakoras, it was very filling and great value for 1400 Hufs!

Bharata
Bharata Cultural Centre is the new home of Indian culture and cuisine: it offers yoga, ayurvedic medicine, meditation, dance and music courses,  and soon cooking classes! The cafe has special offers at the moment with really friendly prices. All food is lacto vegetarian or vegan. There are set menus, special offers for students, lassis and sweets.
Budapest 1074. Almássy tér – Tivadar u. 3.
Open: Monday-Friday:  12:00-8.pm; Saturday 6pm-9pm, Sunday closed
http://bharata.hu/bisztro.html

I have some very pleasant news, 3 new vegetarian restaurants have recently opened in Budapest. I haven’t had the good fortune to check them out yet, but I hope I can post some reviews soon!

Ganges

The Ganga Vega Cafe has a big brother now, a restaurant close to Octogon. They offer delicious vegetarian food, Indian menus, and healthy options. They offer home delivery too.
1064 Budapest Vörösmarty utca 31.
gangesetterem@gmail.com
+36.30.5306368; +36.70.6338981
www.ganges.hu
Open M-Saturday 12- 8 pm

Bharata

Bharata Cultural Centre is the new home of Indian culture and cuisine: it offers yoga, ayurvedic medicine, meditation, dance and music courses,  and soon cooking classes! The cafe has special offers at the moment with really friendly prices. All food is lacto vegetarian. There are set menus, special offers for students, lassis and sweets. Can’t wait to try!
Budapest 1074. Almássy tér – Tivadar u. 3.
Open: Monday-Friday:  12:00-8.pm; Saturday 6pm-9pm, Sunday closed

Hummus Bar

There is a new vegetarian hummus bar just a few minutes from the budaveg vegetarian B&B, at  Hollán Ernő utca 6. James had a Falafel plate and was very pleased with it.
Open: Monday-Friday 10-10pm Saturday Sunday: 12-10 pm
Tel: 06 70 932 8284

Mannatural 

This lovely vegan raw food restaurant has moved! Just a few minutes from the previous location to 1054 Budapest, Garibaldi u. 5. They also offer an “all you can eat buffet” lunch for 3000 HUF and dinner for 5000 HUF on weekdays. Please call or email to reserve for dinner: 06-20-776-9843, info@mannatural.hu, just pop in for lunch.

This means we have now 22 vegetarian restaurants and cafes in Budapest, pretty amazing! I have just updated the restaurants page and our ebook accordingly, which you can get by subscribing to our mailing list. We hardly ever send out any emails, and you can safely unsubscribe any time.

This has been one of my favourite places since it opened, a real gem in the city. Napos Oldal is very conveniently located between Octogon and Nyugati tér easy to pop in when I am running errands or on the way to the cinema in the evening. The name means “sunny side” and it’s surprisingly sunny due to the corner location.

Half of the premises is a veggie cafe, the other half is a health food shop, selling everything from seitan to organic cosmetics. They have a wide selection of fresh salads, baked and fried vegetables, sandwiches and cakes. There is a different soup and main dish every day, you can see the daily offers on their website. There is also a wide selection of teas and other drinks. The menu  is almost always vegan, and the majority of the salads and sandwiches are too. My favourite is the seitan sandwich, and these are pre-packed so you can easily and quickly take them away.

They do a wide range of cakes from sugar free candida cakes to real patisserie beauties and none of the cakes (or dishes) contain eggs, yeast or white sugar. Obviously a real heaven for the health conscious or candida sufferers. Also the ingredients are  roughly 30% organic.

I chose two types of salads, bulghur and potato, a vegetable pie, a vegetable pancake, a carrot and walnut cake and a cup of green tea  for my lunch. Firstly the cups are BIG, which I just love, I love tea and I find small cups annoying, why go stingy on water?! The food was delicious and filling, the cake was a “healthy” cake, so not too sweet, but I like it that way.

You order at the counter, all the signs are in English, and you pay at the health food counter on the way out, I think it is great that you don’t need to queue twice if you want to buy anything. There is a nice and very light seating are with 5 tables, it was busy at lunchtime, but I always had a seat, as many buy takeaway.

Napos oldal is an amazingly peaceful place right in the middle of the city, highly recommended!
 
Address: Jókai u. 7. Metro: Nyugati tér on blue line or tram: 4/6 at Nyugati tér or Oktogon
Open: Monday- Friday 10 am till 8 pm, Saturday 10 am till 2 pm.
Tel: 1-3540048
http://www.naposoldal.com/

We got a tiny garden- even by British standards but I try to squeeze in everything we need: a play area for the kids and the dog, flowers and a vegetable garden. I was a bit reluctant at first, since there was a septic tank at the bottom of the garden for a good 30 years and I was afraid that the soil might be contaminated so for the first few years we were living here I only grew flowers and herbs.

One day browsing the net I came across a brilliant way of container gardening called an “earthbox”  and found a great tutorial on how to build your own and James kindly built a couple for us.

I was very excited about starting to produce our own food and got a lot of potting soil- but made the first mistake of buying “general flower potting soil” (általános virágföld in magyar) which is really not suitable for growing vegetables and can be toxic as I learnt later from Áron the organic farmer. I also bought far too many plants at the market- got carried away- and planted cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers and courgettes. I covered the top with the black plastic bag of the potting compost and filled up the containers with water- and checked the plants every day!

And gosh they grew! The peppers were doing really well even though they were a bit crammed, one cucumber went mental and grew all over the lawn and the tomatoes looked very promising too.

The courgette/ zuccini plants looked great and had a couple of baby fruits, then started rotting one day, still don’t know why- and it happened this year too.

The cucumber produced plenty of delicious fruit and we found it extremely exciting and satisfying to pick a fresh cucumber when were making sandwiches. The tomatoes soon had bright red fruit which caught the attention of our naughty dog, and he kept picking the tomatoes- and destroying the plants with his gentle 35 kg body. Why on earth did we raise him vegetarian? So not many tomatoes for us. James built an impressive fence around the plants but soon Oli demolished that too and gulped down the rest. Ah well, at least the peppers did well.

A year later when we were back in England I was flipping through a gardening catalogue and the “upside down tomatoes” caught my eyes. I was a bit sceptical but willing to try; if it worked we’d have tomatoes growing out of the dog’s range! If you google it you will find plenty of video tutorials  on how to make your own. I just got a couple of builder’s buckets, James drilled a hole in the bottom and voila. I put in the tomato plant and planted flowers on the top. To be honest the flowers did a lot better than the tomatoes, the did produce some fruit but none of them did great. I experimented with strawberries and cucumbers this year and the strawberry did ok, the cucumber did really well, till we forgot to water it once- which ruined the plant. The moral of the story is that cucumbers should go in Earthboxes, they need so much water (and they are safe from the dog). For more images click the photos or the flickr button in the side bar.


Next time I'll write about container gardening and pergolas.
Are you also growing vegetables at home?

I was over the moon when I found this little veggie place a few minutes walk from our newly established veggie B&B in 2003 and I became a patron immediately. I just got hooked on their warm spinach pita bread, spinach is my favourite vegetable and I can’t have it too often.

The place is tiny, with only 4 chairs and 2 tables outside in summer, but I always managed to get a seat since most customers just pick up their food and eat in their office.
There is a lovely selection of sandwiches, warm pita breads, salads, and one or two main dishes a day and some desserts. They also offer water, fresh fruit juices, cocktails and teas. There is always a vegan and a macrobiotic option. The dishes are very imaginative, Indian, Hungarian, Italian and so on.  The food is free from additives and preservatives and filled with their loving care!
They make the sandwiches in the shop, the salads and the mains are made in their home delivery kitchen and arrive in the shop around 12. There is normally warm food till 3.30 or 4.00, but you can get sandwiches from 11.00-5.00.

I popped in at 11 just as they were opening up, I normally get up at the crack of dawn so by 11 I am usually famished and the nice girl behind the counter was very understanding and warmed up the previous day’s lecsó, my favourite traditional Hungarian food! It was delicious and just the right spiciness- we Hungarians love our paprika!

I was on my way to the airport to pick up a couple of omnivorous friends from Denmark, so I bought 4 sandwiches as well, two mozzarella tomato and two parmesan rucola baguettes, they were a massive hit and very good value for 690 Hufs!

Nem süti 
small sandwich bar, five minutes walk from the budaveg apartment right next to Margit Bridge,

Address: Jászai Mari tér 4./b (Pozsonyi u). Metro: Nyugati tér on blue line, tram: 4/6 at Jászai Mari tér
Open: Mon-Fri 11am-5pm
Ovo-lacto-veggie
http://www.nemsuti.hu/
https://www.facebook.com/nemsuti

Hummus bar is a franchise with 3 restaurants in Budapest, all very conveniently located in downtown and all offering a wide range of vegan food. The bar in Alkotmány utca is vegetarian, and the one in Kecskeméti and Október 6 utca are “normal” as they say on their website, which is probably not “normal” to us but they also offer a very good veggie selection.

They have hummus dishes, sandwiches, salads, soups and desserts and different hot and cold drinks. I had lunch at the Kecskeméti utca Hummus Bar the other day, I had a falafel plate with mint tea, the service was a bit on the slow side but the stuff was excellent. It has both indoor and outdoor seating and since Kecskeméti utca has restricted traffic it was very pleasant and metropolitan to eat on the pavement area and enjoy the city.

Hummus bar 
Middle Eastern vegan friendly cafes, (but only one is exclusively vegetarian) now at three locations.
English menu, English spoken.
www.hummusbar.hu


Address: V. ker. Október 6. str. 19 Vegetarian friendly
Open: Monday-Friday 11.30-10pm Saturday Sunday: 12-10 pm
Tel: 3540108

Address: V. ker. Kecskeméti str. 1 Vegetarian friendly
Open: Monday-Friday 10-10pm Saturday Sunday: 12-10 pm
Tel+36 (70) 932-8284

Address:1054 Budapest, Alkotmány utca 20 Metro Arany János utca (blue) Vegetarian
Open: Monday-Friday 10-10 pm, Saturday-Sunday 12-10 pm
Tel: 302-13-85

Just a 5 minute walk from the budaveg vegetarian apartment you can find the nearest vegetarian cafe: Keleti Életmód Centrum.

It is in fact a lot more than a cafe: it is an alternative health centre, a health food shop and an organic vegetarian cafe. They serve organic fruit and vegetable juices, coffee, teas, salads, sandwiches, pizzas, warm meals, healthy cakes, sugarfree deserts, organic ice cream, etc: there is food for vegans, diabetics, gluten intolerants, and people on a candida diet.  Most of the dishes are vegan, some lacto vegetarian, and they are always clearly marked. They aim to serve exclusively organic food, at the moment roughly 90% of what they serve is organic.
They open at 8 in the morning and offer a good breakfast selection: pastries, porridge, soya sausages, sandwiches and of course coffee and tea.

At lunchtime they have a set meal of two dishes, the menu changes from week to week, you can check the menu on their website or pick up the small flyers in the shop. You can call and order lunch in advance or just pop in but they are normally sold out of the set menu by 3 pm. I had a seitan sandwich, a langallo Hungarian style, a bit like a pizza with grain sausages, and a tofu-plum cake- all really delicious.

The cafe has a lovely atmosphere, small tables and nice decor, and lots of books to entertain you! In the summer you can sit outside and enjoy the breeze from the Danube and the nearby park, you can also ask for a takeaway.

The natural practitioners are upstairs offering everything from massage to kaballah and NLP.
The health food store is well stocked with vegan delights; soy and seitan sausages and slices, organic bread and pastries, juices, jams, glutenfree and diabetic products, organic fruit and vegetables.

They have a very generous loyalty card: for every 1000 hufs you spend, you’ll get a stamp- when you have 10 stamps you get a breakfast for two!

Open: weekdays 8 am-8 pm
1137 Budapest, Pozsonyi út 16.
Tel.: (1) 339-0209
info@eletmodcentrum.hu
http://www.eletmodcentrum.hu/

Closed down in 2012 unfortunately!

The newest vegan cafe in Budapest is right in the city centre; a few minutes walk from Deák tér, on Paulay Ede street. The place looked inviting and the people lovely on their facebook page and we were eager to try out their vegan delights.

The place is tiny but they made the most of it I guess. As you enter you pass the counter and can see into the kitchen. You can place your order, then go upstairs where there is a small seated area which can seat 12 people.
They do vegan burgers (tofu and bean burgers), burgers with chips/ french fries, hot dogs, vegan spreads, salads, and soya shakes. Every day there are two special dishes which are posted early morning on facebook and their blog.

_

I had bean burger menu with lemonade and my friend tried the tofu burger (in the background), and I have to say they don’t go stingy on the portions; those burgers were huge and really filling! The prices are very friendly, good value for money.

Address:  1061 Budapest Paulay Ede 8.
Open:  Mo – Th : 11.30 – 20.00, Friday: 11.30 – 22.00, Saturday: 15.00 – 22.00

http://gorillavegabufe.blogspot.com/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/GORILLA-VEGA-B%C3%9CF%C3%89-vegan-vegetarian-restaurant/127044247370486?sk=wall_

Meet Ollie, our black lab, he just turned 6 the other day. And to celebrate we gave him a bucket of sour cream and 6 bananas, his favourite fruit.

It was quite accidental how we got him, we had no intention of getting a dog really since we were travelling so much back then, but one day I casually listened to a friend, a vet working at the police K9 unit bragging about his sniffer dog and the puppies on the way and he just happened to show me the pedigree of the dog- and to my utmost shock I saw the name of my dog I got in ‘87 among the great grandparents! Now Daniel was the best dog ever. He was a lovely black lab, won several shows in Hungary and did well in the dog school too, and was a dear family member. He grew old together with my granddad and they kept each other company in the last few years, and in a second I found myself thinking about a puppy…

So just out of simple curiosity I went to see them when they were 5 days old, still sure that we were not getting a dog… But guess what; they were incredibly cute; 4 yellow pups and one black one, which is the colour I prefer, look at him just fitting in my hand here:

Somehow people prefer yellow labs in Hungary so the black one was not signed up so we had some time to mull over it, but the fact of the matter is once you saw the puppies you were lost, we were any case. James never had a dog before and said “Wonder if he will be a dog that fetches sticks? Does the word “retriever” mean anything to you? I asked….
So we said yes and in August instead of going to the Sziget festival we picked him up and brought him home. And yes he turned out to be a dog that fetches sticks, balls and there is no way to keep him out of water, he would even break the ice of the pond in December for a dip.

Ollie 5 weeks

I heard about vegetarian dogs before but I was somewhat sceptical but the same vet friend told us about a couple of veggie dogs in his practice and at the same time we found Yarrah organic vegetarian dog food in the pet shop, so decided to try raising him vegetarian and see how it went ready to adjust his food if the vegetarian diet didn’t suit him.  I was just amazed how he thrived on Yarrah and our leftovers; we found out soon that his favourite foods are bananas and tomatoes- so much so that he ate all the tomatoes in our garden. (Do you think we got any sympathy from friends? Alas, no, it is our fault for raising him vegetarian. This made me very interested in upside down tomatoes).
We couldn’t get Yarrah food for a few months and we tried the vegetarian Royal Canine but he didn’t like it at all, and to be frank it is not really vegetarian because it contains fish oils. Luckily now Yarrah is available all the time now.

My mum used to cook meat, rice and such for my old dog but he did love fruit and veg very much, in fact he loved tomatoes and peppers the most! I have been chatting to other dog owners and many report that their dogs would raid the bin for potato peelings, apple cores: I guess most dogs crave a lot more fruit and vegetables than most people would think. A friend of mine said that his dog would prefer any fruit to tinned dog food. The fact is that most dog food is junk, it is downright scary what goes in the tin, our vet urged us to buy quality dog food because the cheap varieties destroy dog’s livers and kidneys, and also many people pointed out at our dog school that their dogs seems to die a lot earlier now that they are fed on dog food than back in the time when people cooked for them or fed them with leftovers. A few years ago a well known brand was fined in Hungary for advertising their dog food “very meaty” when it contained in fact 4% meat. That makes me think that there are plenty of almost vegetarian dogs out there but instead of good nutritious food they get flavoured junk.

So I was indeed sceptical in the beginning but now after 6 years I think I can say from experience that it is not only possible to keep dogs on a vegetarian diet but it is also beneficial for them. During these 6 years Ollie has been ill twice; once with a kennel cough and once he had some mites, but compared with other dogs, or his great grandfather, that is pretty good indeed! He is very athletic and has a lovely shiny coat and far too much energy. Our local vet, doesn’t know he is vegetarian (this is after all Hungary where many people still think meat is an absolute necessity for humans) but he always compliments us on keeping him so healthy.

We have no illusions, if he had a chance he would eat meat, like he eats anything he can lay his paws on from scavenged apple cores to cat shit… (sigh) just like children would stuff themselves with chocolate or ice cream if they had the chance, but just because they like it, it doesn’t mean it is good for them.
There are a couple of drawbacks of keeping a veggie dog: he nicks the tomatoes from the bushes and also has perfect digestion- which means that you have to bend down to pick up poo 4, or sometimes even 5 times a day…