14 Perfectly Low-Key Breakfast Places In Budapest

#1 Jedermann Café

Hans van Vliet, the owner of Jedermann Café, is a legendary restaurateur in Budapest with a genius for creating atmospheric, all-inviting places for everyone to enjoy (hence "Jedermann", which translates to "everyone"). On any given day, tables might be filled with senior citizens fiercely debating Hungarian politics, students gossiping over a cup of coffee, and a theater director mapping out upcoming projects with the staff. Jedermann, which marries a café with a bar, is hiding in a quiet street in District 9, not far from the city center, but away from the throngs clogging the party district.

#2 Lumen Café Budapest

Head to Lumen Café if you'd like to avoid the tourist-heavy streets of the Jewish Quarter, but still get a cup of specialty coffee or craft beer in a hip neighborhood. With egg-based breakfast dishes (served until noon), a full-service kitchen, and a sleek interior featuring plenty of greenery, and concrete and wood finishes, Lumen is more than your average neighborhood café. But it's the patrons, students, artists, and neighborhood bohemians, who give soul to the place.

#3 Kino Café

Kino is a laid-back, breakfast-all-day restaurant set along Budapest's Grand Boulevard. The interior is draped in movie posters as Kino occupies the ticketing area of an independent movie theater. The low-priced and tasty breakfast dishes are served seven days a week—when in doubt, go for the hearty "Hungarian" scrambled eggs packing bacon, sausage, tomatoes, and a sprinkle of grated cheese (€3). Also, the ever-changing selection of cakes taste just as good as they look.

#4 Csiga Café

Csiga is a popular café and restaurant in the increasingly trendy outer District 8, a bit outside the city center. The neighborhood, situated just beyond the Grand Boulevard, is rising to cool-status as locals are starting to eschew the throngs of the party district.

#5 Bambi Eszpresszó

If you're looking to immerse yourself in a lively, deeply local, communist-era neighborhood bar that doubles as a breakfast joint, I can't think of a better place than Bambi Eszpresszó in Buda. What makes Bambi the real deal? It isn’t trying to show off an artificial (retro), unremembered past—it’s a genuine throwback.

#6 Café Panini

Breakfast places in Budapest are few and far between, and the ones that do exist are mostly in downtown, catering to tourists. This isn't the case with Café Panini, a chic neighborhood breakfast restaurant inside the secluded world of Újlipótváros.

#7 Monori Center Hong Kong Büfé (港式茶餐厅)

If you ever wondered what a Chinese breakfast was like, Hong Kong Büfé in Budapest's Chinatown (Monori Center) offers a chance to find out. For less than €5, you can try classic Chinese breakfast staples here including cong you bing, congee, and youtiao.

#8 JóKrisz Lángos Sütöde

For a truly, deeply local experience, make your way to this bare-bones food stall inside the Rákóczi Market Hall in Budapest's District 8. Hiding in the back of the building is JóKrisz Lángos Sütöde, a mom-and-pop, standing-only eatery that specializes in lángos, a traditional, deep-fried Hungarian flatbread. I usually visit Jókrisz early in the mornings when the colorful cast of characters flock here from the mainly working-class neighborhood.

#9 Három Tarka Macska Bakery

Három Tarka Macska is an artisan bakery on the tastefully upscale Pozsonyi Road in Újlipótváros, a well-heeled area I think of as the “West Village of Budapest.” Step in, and a paradise of aromatic and still-steaming sourdough, whole wheat, and rye breads, brioches, and rolls in all shapes and sizes await you. The two must-try local favorites are the túrós batyu (a sweet-tart cottage cheese-filled laminated pastry) and the kakaós csiga (a snail-shaped chocolate pastry roll), which go down especially well with flavored yogurts that Három Tarka Macska sources from a local family-owned producer.

#10 HeHe Chinese Restaurant (和和美食)

If you’re looking for tasty and wallet-friendly Chinese food in Budapest, HeHe is one of your best bets. They serve an array of authentic Chinese dishes from a relatively modest, undecorated space in Budapest's Chinatown (Monori Center), which takes about 25 minutes to get to by public transport from the city center.

#11 La nube café

La nube is a café and tapas bar tucked away in a side street in the increasingly hip Újbuda neighborhood on the Buda side. The main appeal of this Hungarian-Spanish, family-run operation is the welcoming, homey atmosphere and mixed group of patrons. On a typical day, customers might comprise parents with young children, hipsters typing away on their iPhones, and aging locals sipping glasses of draft San Miguel.

#12 Keksz

Part café, part restaurant, part bar, Keksz is a hybrid space located under the stately arch that marks the entry point of Budapest's party district. There are a handful of passable traditional Hungarian dishes here—including a goulash soup (€5), a catfish paprikash (€7), and a lecsó (€6), which is similar to a ratatouille—but you're best off sticking to the breakfast-all-day offerings like the scrambled eggs (€4) or the panini selections (€6). Alternatively, you can build your own salad from a set of ingredients.

#13 Balla-Hús

Opened in 1951, Balla-Hús is one of the few remaining standalone butcher shops in downtown Budapest. Balla's business model has evolved over the decades: instead of meat, today they mainly serve low-priced breakfast and lunch dishes to the shrinking number of local residents (Airbnb, I'm looking at you).

#14 Szimpla Háztáji

This cute little café with rustic furnishings isn't to be confused with Szimpla Kert, the world-famous ruin bar, which is a few doors down from here and run by the same owners. Szimpla Háztáji specializes in breakfast food, organic fruit juices, home-made syrups, and cakes with a "fresh-fresh-fresh" mantra: they source all ingredients from local farmers, whose produce you can also find at Szimpla Kert's farmer's market on Sunday mornings.

Rankings are based on a combination of food/drink, atmosphere, service, and price. The author visits all restaurants incognito.