This small, atmospheric coffee shop is just around the corner of Corvinus University of Budapest, at the crossing of Közraktár and Czuczor Street. In the heart of town, yet in a strangely quiet spot it’s a perfect place to relax a few minutes with a good coffee in a rushing day at the Capital. The interior is narrow (but cozy), and therefore it’s sometimes hard to find an empty table. But luckily the place owns a nice little terrace, which is even more remarkable in the summertime.
  

The decoration of the shop is creative and simple. There are lot of gadgets and various staff everywhere, but it’s placed in a very elegant way. There are patterns on the wall and many pictures, all of them merging well to the classy design of the shop. The pictures are taken and prepared by the owner of the place, Attila Molnár. One wall is covered with the billboard of the goods and their prices. The best decoration are the two coffee machines: one is disassembled to components and hanged on the wall, the other is the actual classic coffee making machine on the counter – this one’s cover plates are replaced with Plexiglas so you can see actually the engine while working.

The name (tamp & pull) is originated from the coffee roasting industry, this is how the workers call the key movement of the roasting process. Attila Molnár himself is responsible for the name and the image of the shop. He is one of the biggest names in Hungary in the coffee business. He is 4 times Hungarian Barista (coffee maker) Champion and he clinched a 6^th position on the World Cup in Wien in 2011. He opened this shop one year ago and now he’s opening a new, much larger coffee bar (120 square meters) on the Váci Út – thus making a franchise of the Tamp & Pull brand. He dreamed and implemented the shop, he personally chose all his employees and trained them himself (therefore pretty much everybody was nice in the staff and knew its way with coffee). The competition in the area is quite high, but the prices of the shop are reasonable, the mood is nice and coffee is quite astonishing.

All of the coffees in the shop are from “Gurund” type coffee beans (this is a Greek bean) and roasted in a small business in England, though there are occasional special types of coffees for occasions (they even have special tools for these coffees). Some demanding coffeeshops in Budapest (e.g. MBZ) are using the same beans and are buying them from Tamp & Pull. The permanent menu is divided to black (e.g. espresso), latte (with milk), long (big, strong coffees), wow (flavoured and special coffees) coffees, where they make the flavouring syrups for themselves in the shop and a category called “yamm” – this is basically food: salads, yogurts, sandwiches and more. They use fresh, protein rich milk for the coffees – but we know why this is important from the previous posts. By the way: the categories are based on the Barista competition’s challenges.

We all ordered a latte at the place.  The serving and the decoration of the table was quite minimal, not much effort has been put in it. Practically there was no decoration on the table, and we didn’t get any additional sugar, no napkins, neither water nor sweets. But the coffee itself was very nice, one of the best we’ve ever had, both in quantity and quality. Great taste from great coffee, it was creamy, sweet and kind of similar to dark chocolate. The price of the coffe was also very reasonable (550 HUF), especially with the buy-one-get-one-for-free promotion in the shop. We tried one of the sandwiches, too, which also tasted very good.

Overall it was one of our best experiences so far, we can only recommend this place to anybody who wants a good coffee at a nice place at Budapest.

by Laci