Gundel Restaurant

Restaurateur Károly Gundel remains the only person in Hungary to ever earn a profile in the New Yorker Magazine. In 1948, legendary reporter Joseph Wechsberg came to Budapest to feature the owner of Central Europe’s leading restaurant, which Gundel founded in 1910 and named for himself. “Gundel contributed more to the fame of Hungarian cooking than any other man and is ranked by connoisseurs all over the world in a class with Escoffier and Fernand Point,” reads the intro.

It’s a beautiful and heartbreaking story from the twilight years of Gundel, before the restaurant was nationalized and ruined by the Communist regime, forcing Károly Gundel to flee Hungary and die in poverty in 1956.

After the fall of Communism, the restaurant was revived in 1991 by the Hungarian-born American restaurateur, George Láng, and his billionaire business partner, Ronald Lauder. Hiring an army of interior designers, artists, and even an in-house historian, they spent a shocking $22 million on the restoration (Milton Glaser, who did the I love New York sign, designed the new Gundel logo). Soon, high profile guests were back, including Queen Elizabeth.

After Láng’s illness, Gundel changed hands and the restaurant struggled to live up to its reputation. It was seen as a pricey establishment for tourists, trafficking in nostalgia. In 2021, Eventrend, a large hospitality group also in charge of Budapest’s New York Cafe, took over the business to little fanfare.

It remains a commercial machine that capitalizes on the name – Gundel signs appear all over the fancy dishware. But the service is excellent and the dishes surprisingly delicious. Especially good are the Gundel-related classics, such as the palóc soup, the Kárpáti fogas, the Gundel pancake. With €16-22 mains, prices are similar to higher end restaurants in Budapest. It turns out Gundel is more than just a tourist bait!