8 of my Favorite Chinese Restaurants in Budapest

Some of the best Chinese food in Europe is served here in Budapest, whose Chinatown is among the biggest on the continent and layered with true-to-China restaurants. All this just a bus ride from the city center. Perhaps best of all is Spicy Fish, a polished establishment with a focus on Sichuan fare.

On a recent meal, after an appetizer of wood ear mushroom salad, sour daikon radish, and century egg with tofu, we had the restaurant's most famous dish, the namesake spicy fish (shui zhu yu): A large bowl of still-boiling oil piled with red chilis, mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns, and white carp filets. Other Sichuan classics such as Chongqing spicy chicken (lazi ji), mapo tofu, and yuxiang shredded pork (fish-fragrant pork) are also excellent.

Those not into chili heat should go for the gently sour beef soup with rice vermicelli (酸汤肥牛; suan tang fei niu) and the more heart-warming dishes of northeastern China: dumplings, baozi, or the Dongpo pork, a thick belly cut of fall-apart-tender meat with a deeply porcine flavor. The staff speaks some Hungarian and English and the menu features helpful pictures of the dishes. A full meal with a drink comes out to about €35 per person.

Hidden within an interior courtyard, Milky Way is the best-known seafood restaurant within Budapest’s Chinatown. The owner is knowledgeable about lobsters, crabs, tiger prawns, shrimps, and other treasures of the sea not only because he hails from the seaside Chinese city of Wenzhou, but because he worked at a fish market for fifteen years before opening this restaurant.

We loved the steamed scallops in a rich sauce layered with glass noodles and garlic (suan rong shan bei; 蒜蓉鲜贝) and had a delicious whole steamed pike-perch, which was tender and pure tasting and seasoned gently with sweetened soy sauce and scallions (qing zheng lu yu; 清蒸鲈鱼). Among the wallet-friendlier options is the fish soup, boosted with noodles, eggs, bok choy, and shiitake.

Apart from seafood, their laziji is excellent – manageably spicy morsels of fried chicken buried in chili peppers. Also good: the pork baozi, the Wenzhou-style pork belly slices (wen zhou jiang rou; 温州酱肉) and the egg fried rice. (We didn't try it, but I was recommended by several people their Peking duck, which has to be pre-ordered).

To find the restaurant, you'll need to weave your way through the courtyard parking lot and climb two flights of stairs. The main dining hall opens to six private rooms. Friday and Saturday evenings get busy with local Vietnamese and Chinese people so reservations are a must. Seafood is pricey in landlocked Hungary and a full meal with a drink comes out to about €40 per person. The Chinese service staff speaks some English and Hungarian.

Hehe is an unpretentious Chinese eatery in Budapest's Chinatown (Monori Center). The place's claim to fame is the Lanzhou-style hand-pulled (lamian) and knife-shaved (dao xiao mian) beef noodle soups. Anyone can peek through the kitchen door and watch Chinatown's legendary noodle chef – Gu bácsi – swiftly transform a pile of dead dough into pliant and perfectly uniform strands before depositing the spaghetti-like coils into the boiling broth. No pasta machine here, just a few energetic motions of the hand and decades of experience.

I am partial to the knife-shaved version, which I sometimes order as a “dry” base for a noodle dish. Hehe's other specialty is spicy Sichuan fare. My favorites include the boiled beef (shui zhu niu rou); the sweet-sour shredded pork (yuxiang rousi); the dan dan noodles; and the double-cooked pork belly (hui guo rou). I usually also order a plate of stir-fried rice cakes (chao nian gao). Bigger groups can opt for the whole carp served in boiling chili oil and drizzled with Sichuan peppercorns (shui zhu yu). Hehe is reachable in about twenty minutes from the city center by public transport.

There's near consensus within the local Chinese community that Dabao Jiaozi is the destination for home-style dumplings in Budapest – this in a city with more than 30,000 Chinese people. Dabao makes Shandong-style dumplings, which means the wrappers are on the thick and chewy side. There are several versions, usually with a base-filling of ground pork, shrimp, and shredded Chinese chives.

Located within Budapest's Chinatown, DaBao is mainly a takeout operation but there's a few tables for sitdown customers. While waiting for your order, cast a glance at the kitchen, where you might catch a cheery group of Chinese women hunched over a mound of dough, flattening, stuffing, and folding pieces with incredible efficiency. An order, fifteen pieces, will appease the average appetite and cost about €8. I also like their century eggs.

Budapest’s Chinatown (Monori Center) isn’t usually considered the most fashionable dining destination, after all, who gets excited about rows of warehouses on the city's outskirts? Fans of Chinese food, of course. Similar to HeHe, this unpretentious eatery serves up some of the best Chinese fare in Budapest. The owners hail from Shandong province, but the food reflects many parts of China. A highlight is the sweet-and-sour pork (tang cu li ji), a dish one will find in most Chinese restaurants but here the sauce hits all the right notes – not cloyingly sweet and perfectly bright-tasting – with tender and crispy meat.

They have a simplified menu with affordable and delicious takeout-classics and I can also recommend the dumplings and the twice-cooked pork belly (hui guo rou). My Chinese friend usually recommends the bone-in chicken dry pot (gan guo ji), an entire bird chopped into small pieces and served with vegetables, as well as fish-fragrant braised eggplant (yuxiang qiezi). Note that Shandong usually shuts down in February during Chinese New Year.