Hadik Kávéház
True, the dense downtown area
is in Pest, therefore, one finds a higher agglomeration on coffee places there.
But crossing the bridge from time to time, you’ll also find a host of
opportunities for bumping into the one or other coffee house. So, now it is
about time to take a look on the other side of the river as well! Today’s
sunshine loaded weather suggests it might be a good idea to keep looking for a place
with patio or terrace.
You’ll find one of those, when
walking up the main street, Bartok Béla from the Gellért Hotel towards Móricz
Zsigmond and Kosztolányi Dezsö square. Somewhere half along your way, you’ll
find a classy four story beige building in Classical Style on the corner. In
the ground floor, there is The Hadik Café House, one of
Budapest’s historical cafés.
It opened it’s doors the first
time in 1906 and was the meeting ground for many artists, poets and such, back
in the golden 20s era of Budapest. All of the above mentioned names did hang
out at Hadik on a regular basis, Karinty was there all the time and Csontváry
used to live upstairs for some time. However, back then Hadik was not famous
for serving good coffee, quite the opposite.
Looking at it today, inside the
café much of the old glory remains. The whole interior and furnishing rewinds
time back a 100 years. Creaking wooden floor, art-nouveau olive armchairs and
cherry-wood chairs and tables everywhere. Flocks of jabbering older ladies sit
at the larger round tables from where big laughter arises every few minutes.
Taking place in one of the big cushioned armchairs really makes you believe you
just arrived here with your horse-carriage. The coffee they serve is nothing extraordinary
special, you can have one pick out of the ten offerings on the menu. But in
combination with their breakfast offerings, you’ll be delighted to have made
the choice to come here. I can highly recommend the sugared pancake &
raisins = császármorzsa in Hungarian.
Then you can lean back and pick up a newspaper to read from next to your table. 
Outdoors, on the patio the tourists start to flow in. But apart from those, you
might still catch the sight of a long grey haired pipe smoking writer typing
and scribbling notes in a script. Hadik is still a meeting place for artists
and musicians – evening programs include piano and jazz concerts as well as
literature soirées with readings performed by the authors.
You don’t pay a tourist price
bonus, coffees are priced at 350 to 750 Ft and a breakfast or entrée comes at
around 1000 Ft.
All in all, I believe it’s a
very cozy place to which I come a couple of times during a year, whenever
friends are visiting and we happened to walk by. Absolutely worth it. Although
it is a café, you can also order lunch and dinner here. If it’s too late for a
coffee, you might just go next door to Szatyor bar, which formerly was also
part of the café.
