Despite the reputation of fairly unexciting food in Hungary, I have to say that we ate very well during our time in Budapest. Perhaps it’s because we stayed clear of many of the “traditional” foods and searching around on the web for recommendations make it much easier for bigger places. The other good thing is that Budapest is still very cheap compared to many other places, making it much easier to have good food without breaking the budget so much.

Anyway, the first place we ate for dinner was intentionally Italian as it was all about the carb loading (but not too much!) before the day of the race.

We walked around and picked, what turned out to be a very nice restaurant where we could eat alfresco, and had an enjoyable meal.

We started with two different soups, my sister picking this clear beef broth with a single ravioli (pictured above). Good but she was surprised just to have the one.

I went for the lobster bisque that also came with a bread dumpling, and also just the one. I can’t really say that I’m a bread dumpling sort of fan. The soup really could have done with some croutons for a contrast of texture, to which the bread dumpling didn’t do much. Fortunately the soup was really tasty and made up for it.

My sister proceeded to have the mussels, admittedly not very Italian but figured it would be a bit of a lighter alternative to some heavy pasta meal.

I, opted, for a Tagliatelle with speck and porcini mushrooms, a lovely and generous serving of perfectly al dente pasta and amazing chunks of flavour.

We finished the dinner off with a Tiramisu, decadently rich and presented in a very different manner, almost as if they used an ice cream scoop for each bite. Service was friendly, the atmosphere busy but not overwhelmingly noisy and an enjoyable meal to start off the long weekend.

Name: Trattoria Barca Bianca
Found on: V. kerület Fehérhajó utca 5, Pest side of Budapest.
Website: http://barcabianca.eu/