Where to eat with the locals: The 39 Best Cheap Restaurants In Budapest

"A field of dreams, a landscape of braised, and fried, and cured delights," said the late Anthony Bourdain of Belvárosi Disznótoros after his 2015 visit. This wallet-friendly self-service sausage shop in Budapest's downtown does serve a dizzying array of ready-made and to-be-prepared traditional meat dishes. Think paprika and blood sausage, grilled pork chop, wild boar stew, and schnitzel. I usually go for a simple and delicious snappy sausage with a side of mustard and a slice of bread (there's no seating, only high-top tables and standing counters).

Frici Papa is a tourist-heavy restaurant in Budapest favored by visitors and locals looking for low-priced Hungarian food and old-school vibes. Prices are truly rock-bottom, even by local standards. The humble two-story interior features cheap wood paneling, tablecloths covered with sticky plastic, and waiters dressed as if parachuted here from the '80s.

Part butcher shop, part ready-to-eat meat paradise, Pinczi hús-hentesáru is an iconic sausage shop in Budapest exhibiting a fast-disappearing side of the city. This low-priced, bare-bones lunch destination, which opened in 1991, specializes in meat dishes that have traditionally been dear to Hungarian stomachs — sausages, meatballs, pork ribs. No matter the time of day, Pinczi swarms with customers who're a cross-section of local residents, with a noticeable concentration of middle-aged men carrying protruding bellies.

Low prices, homestyle Hungarian dishes, a pared-down interior, no English menu, let alone an Instagram page: these are promising signs that you've stumbled on a truly local eatery. Városház Snack, which opened in 1985, is a shoebox-sized counter-service restaurant in Budapest's downtown that's popular among emplyees of the Mayor's Office across the street.

For a deeply local lunch experience in Budapest, it’s hard to think of a better place than Kívánság Étkezde. The continued existence of this modest eatery, which opened in 1985, is evidence that there’s still lingering love for old-school family-run restaurants. After all, they’re quick, cheap, and some of them, like Kívánság, serve homestyle Hungarian classics that have largely disappeared from the city.

Buja Disznó(k) is a lunch-only fast casual restaurant inside the Fény utca market on the Buda side of Budapest. Run by local celebrity chef Lajos Bíró, the culinary mission of Buja Disznó(k) is simple enough: serve delicious traditional Hungarian dishes with small updates and modern adjustments. Liver dumpling soup, pork schnitzel with potato salad, fried chicken thigh, stewed pork liver, sour lungs, and so on. The highlight on Fridays is two Jewish-Hungarian specialty: cholent, and the memorably delicious flódni layered cake. €15 or so will buy you a full meal. Craft beers, wine, and even champagne are also served.

Lined with Thai, Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese restaurants near one another, Budapest’s sleepy Szondi Street in District 6 is a paradise of international food. Saigon Bistro, a humble, takeout-looking spot, is one of the few Southern Vietnamese places in Budapest — Hungary took immigrants from the Communist north during the Vietnam War — which means that the dishes here are more gussied up with garnishes and sweeter flavors than elsewhere.

Norbi Étkezde is a tiny self-service eatery in Budapest's Újlipótváros neighborhood, not far from the city center. Every morning, they freshly prepare a host of Hungarian dishes, mostly soups and fried and breaded meats, so that by lunchtime they can feed the crowds with incredible efficiency. The line at midday can stretch outside the building — a sure sign of impending deliciousness.

Pocakos Lakatos is a popular lunch-only eatery on the outskirts of Budapest. Since it takes about 25 minutes to get to from downtown by public transport, I especially recommend this place for people looking for a truly local dining experience in Budapest (I promise you'll be the only tourist here).

Opened in 1981, Öcsi étkezde is a teeny-tiny, lunch-only eatery in Budapest's outer District 8, a bit away from the city center. The engine of this modest mom-and-pop restaurant is Erzsi, who runs the kitchen all by herself and occasionally pops into the dining area with flour-dusted hands to ask a regular patron whether he wants a schnitzel with his lecsó. Feri, her husband, sporting a white lab coat, multitasks by taking orders, serving food, and chatting with customers, most of whom he knows by name. Despite pushing 70, he retains a youthful presence and handsome features.

Opened in 1992, Csirke Csibész is an iconic chicken sandwich shop in Budapest's District 6. As with pizza joints, good poultry vendors tend to be democratic establishments, bringing together people from all walks of life. This is also true for Csirke Csibész, where construction workers and office employees alike line up for the flavorful fried and roasted birds at lunchtime.

In 2018, three Thai ladies, two of whom had been working in Thai kitchens in Budapest, decided to strike out on their own. Their restaurant, Rim Thanonh, is a pocket-sized space on the edge of the city's party district, near the Grand Boulevard. With a bare-bones, undecorated interior, Rim Thanonh isn’t the type of place where you'd go for birthday celebrations or business dinners, but if tasty and reasonably priced home-style Thai food is what you’re after, I can’t think of a better place in Budapest.

Run by three Italian natives, 2 Spaghi is a small pasta shop in Budapest with an endearingly simple mission: serve fresh, made-to-order pasta dishes quickly and well. You're invited to pair a variety of pasta shapes (fusilli, bucatini, tagliatelle, etc.) with a rotating set of sauces. On any day, there might be cacio e pepe, carbonara, puttanesca, amatriciana, and aglio, olio e peperoncino listed on the blackboard.

This neighborhood institution, which opened in 1969, is still mainly a butcher shop but the longest lines form at midday before the steam table containing mounds of freshly made meats. The atmosphere is part of the charm here: senior neighborhood residents often drop by to pick up whatever they dreamed up to cook that day, while students from the nearby University of Technology wolf down low-priced porcine delicacies.

Step into Little Italy and an oversized image of Naples and the Mount Vesuvius face you from the opposite wall. Around it hang blue-and-white soccer scarves emblazoned with “solo Napoli” slogans and nearly all servers are Italian natives. But instead of being on the Tyrrhenian coast, this pizzeria hides in a Budapest neighborhood a bit outside the city center.

You don't need me to tell you: döner kebabs are among the most rewarding street foods — these nutritious umami bombs wrapped in a pita impart the succulent taste of roast lamb or chicken, ideally both. Unfortunately, the stuff Budapest’s countless döner and gyro shops serve hardly does justice to this Ottoman invention that has since been refined by Germany's Turkish street vendors.

Budapest’s Chinatown (Monori Center) isn’t the most fashionable place, after all, who gets excited about decor-deprived rows of warehouses far outside the city center? The obvious answer: fans of Chinese food. Shandong Restaurant is located on a particularly rundown section, but I urge you not to turn your back on it. Similar to HeHe, this unpretentious space serves up some of the best Chinese fare in Budapest.

There's consensus within the local Chinese community that Dabao Jiaozi is the place to head to for home-style dumplings in Budapest — quite a statement in a city with more than 30,000 Chinese people. Dabao makes Shandong-style dumplings, which means the wrappers are a bit thicker and chewier. There's only two versions; both with a base filling of ground pork and shrimp, one packing napa cabbage, the other shredded Chinese chives. I'm slightly in favor of the chive-version, but there isn't much of a flavor difference and they're both very good.

Think Budapest is too small to find here delicious Tibetan food? Think again. On a District 9 side street hides Tsewang Namgyal’s tiny eatery, Namgyal Momo, where he serves up some seriously tasty Tibetan classics. Tsewang, a gregarious political refugee from Tibet who came to Budapest in 2005, speaks fluent Hungarian and appears to know each customer by name.

If you're on a budget and looking for an unpretentious Hungarian meal, leave behind the tourist-heavy streets of downtown and head to Pozsonyi Kisvendéglő in Újlipótváros, near the city center. Red-and-white checkered tablecloths and an exhaustive menu spanning soups, stews, ready-made dishes, and noodle desserts will await you at this popular neighborhood restaurant.

Húsimádó, which translates to "meat lover," is a beloved neighborhood butcher shop in Budapest's Újlipótváros neighborhood. The place is piled so high with bricks of fatback and rows of smoked salami that they can block the view to the other side of the counter. The main draw here is the ready-made sausages: paprika-laced, liver, and blood varieties. I also enjoy the fried chicken liver with pork belly, sauerkraut, and a thick slice of crusty bread to mop up the meat juices. Try to go at midday, which is when the place is buzzing and a constant stream of regulars drift into this adorable bastion of meat.

Looking for a tasty falafel sandwich while in the city center? Avoid the myriad bland gyro joints scattered everywhere, and head instead to Tahina Bite: a modern, vegan take-out shop operated by a Lebanese family and located across the street from the Dohány Street Synagogue.

Budapest is flooded with a sea of takeout gyro, döner kebab, and shawarma shops. Wallet-friendly though they are, the food is generally far from memorable. So I was glad to discover Laziza, located just off the tourist-heavy Váci Street in downtown. While chicken shawarma is the main act, on Thursdays and Sundays the rotating spit is reserved for lamb meat. Both are tender and nicely crunchy on the outside. Price-wise, Laziza is slightly above the city’s street food average, but not unaffordable. Pita and platter options are both available.

Before long, all visitors to Budapest will notice the countless, painfully overlit gyro vendors swarming the city and hawking low-priced sandwiches of mediocre quality. At first glance, San Da Vinci, located along the highway-like Rákóczi út near the city center, looks like one of them, but it turns out to be a worthy venue.

Falafel Bar is your best bet for quick and affordable Middle Eastern fare in Budapest's party district. This unfussy place, which does both takeout and sit-down, serves hearty portions of shawarma, sabich, kebab, and various hummus plates. The must-have dish here is the namesake falafel platter sporting deep-fried chickpea balls that are crunchy on the outside and creamy inside. For a quick snack, I usually order the sabich, an Israeli vegetarian pita packing fried eggplants, vegetables, tahini sauce, and a hard-boiled egg.

Hú Lù Lu is a small Vietnamese restaurant in Budapest’s party district, the type of place where the food speaks louder than the decor (always the better combination). Two Vietnamese-Hungarian twentysomethings, originally from Nghệ An in north-central Vietnam, set out to serve up dishes from their home region alongside Vietnamese classics.

Everyday neighborhood residents and local office workers alike line up for homestyle Hungarian dishes at Akácfa Étkezde, a modest self-service eatery on a side street of Budapest's old Jewish Quarter. The eclectic decor features landscape paintings and pre-war living-room furnishings, while the sticky, checkered tablecloths are pure 1980s nostalgia.

Happy Panda is a takeout shop a bit outside the city center specializing in jianbing, a popular northern Chinese savory crêpe. Usually eaten for breakfast, it's packing sweet bean paste, meat, a fried cracker, scallion, cilantro, and a scrambled egg. It's cheap, filling, and tasty. Happy Panda offers five versions, including a vegetarian, all of them made to order on a cast-iron griddle before you. There's also dumplings, a couple of soups, and noodle dishes, but you're here for the jianbing. Happy Panda can get a little overwhelmed during peak lunch hours, but the owner-couple does its best to get to your order quickly.

Tera Magyar Konyhája ("Tera's Hungarian Kitchen") is an affordable self-service eatery in Újlipótváros, a charming and quiet Budapest neighborhood. At lunchtime, a cross section of local residents show up here, including 80+ senior citizens and trendy hipsters. What brings them together are the low price points and the reliable homestyle dishes.

Kao Niaw Ping Kai Restaurant is located on one of the least inviting stretches of Budapest, the multi-lane Rákóczi Road, where the constant stream of car traffic has all but cleared the area of pedestrians. But don't despair. A downtown bus (take #5, #7, #110, #112, or #178) will drop you right outside the restaurant so you won't need to inhale any exhaust fumes.

For reasonably prepared, low-priced Hungarian food, stop by this hole-in-the-wall on the upper deck of the Klauzal Market in Budapest's old Jewish Quarter. Marika is the driving force behind the kitchen, while her husband, Csaba, sources the ingredients and decides the menu. Many people come here for lángos, a deep-fried flatbread topped with sour cream and grated cheese. The daily specials usually include a goulash, paprika-laced stews, and seasonal dishes like stuffed cabbage during the cold months.

If you like Chinese pancake and are curious about an offbeat part of the city, head to this tiny takeout shop buried deep within the Kőbányai Piac, one of Budapest’s two Chinatowns. Known as jianbing and originating in northern China, these savory crepes are a beloved street food across China. Here, a Chinese lady will help you customize your order and freshly prepare it on a cast iron griddle before you. Many versions exist but eggs, fried crackers, hoisin sauce, and a drizzle of cilantro and scallions are standard ingredients. I also like to add pork floss and sausage for a protein boost. The result is a crispy bundle of flavor bomb (eat it while it's hot).