Spicy Fish Budapest (沸腾鱼乡)

It’s usually a good sign when a Chinese restaurant is buried deep within Chinatown and this is exactly the case with Spicy Fish, one of the top Chinese restaurants in Budapest — to get to it, you'll need to journey out to Monori Center, a 15-minute cab ride from downtown. Spicy Fish's menu features dishes from all parts of China, but especially prominent are seafood and the hot plates from Sichuan (the head chef is from there).

Sichuan classics like Chongqing spicy chicken (lazi ji), mapo tofu, and yuxiang shredded pork (fish-fragrant pork) are all excellent, but the star of the show is the namesake spicy fish (shui zhu yu). Soon after you place an order, a server will bring a tureen brimming with still-boiling oil studded with red chilis, shreds of white carp filets, and mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns. If you prefer something without chilis and don't mind a post-meal food coma, go for the Dongpo pork, a thick cut of fall-apart-tender pork belly with a deeply porcine flavor. With €18-25 mains, the only downside here is the steep price points.