The 26 Hottest Breakfast & Brunch Places In Budapest

À la Maison Grand is a polished breakfast restaurant in the middle of Budapest's downtown, occupying the ground floor of a 1906 Art Nouveau building (take a glance at the striking glass mosaic perched atop the building). The owners spared no expense on the gleaming white, high-ceilinged interior that features plush chairs and comfortable, dusty-blue sofas. Chic, tourist-heavy crowds flock here for the breakfast-all-day and brunch offerings that include reliably prepared croque madame, eggs Florentine, waffles, and also zeitgesty things like acai bowl and avocado toast. Reservations are recommended.

If the iconic New York Café, located right across the street from here, offers a journey back in time, then Horizont Café shows off Budapest's contemporary side. This hip café and breakfast restaurant with floor-to-ceiling windows used to be a movie theater's ticket office. Following a gut renovation, the round interior features mid-century modern and Art Deco furnishings complete with hanging globe lamps, vivid colors, and brass finishes. Central to the space is the coffee counter, where a couple of baristas ground, brew, and serve filter coffees and espresso-based drinks.

The perfectly runny scrambled eggs come speckled with chive and jazzed up with crispy bacon and marinated shallots. Also good is the French toast, enlivened with fresh seasonal fruits. Price points are steep hence the customers consist mainly of chic Millennial tourists. Breakfast is served daily until 4 p.m. but they're closed on Sundays.

Hiding on a quiet downtown side street, Double Shot is a chic breakfast-all-day restaurant and coffee shop in Budapest. The usual suspects of popular international breakfast foods and drinks appear on the menu, including avocado toast, granola bowls, and turmeric latte. They’re all reliably tasty and beautifully plated, even if a bit predictable. Cocktails, craft beers, and Hungarian wines are also available. Note that the prices reflect a bit of downtown mark-up.

STIKA is a hip breakfast restaurant in Budapest where tattooed servers scurry around a sleek space fitted with vintage light bulbs and greenery while fresh R&B tunes drift from the background. In Budapest, many places have tried to nail the concept, but STIKA, this pocket-sized restaurant in the old Jewish Quarter, was the first to get it right. The food is far from memorable, but the vibes can make up for it.

The highlights of the breakfast and brunch menus, served daily until 4 p.m., are the scrambled eggs with crispy bacon, the fluffy pancakes doused in maple syrup, and the bagels. Hungarian wines and beers are also available. On weekends, you'll most likely have to wait in line for a table.

The Buda side of the city has begun to catch up to Pest when it comes to having chic, new-wave breakfast joints. New wave? The kinds of places that cater to global tastes with dishes that wouldn’t seem out of place anywhere from Sydney to San Francisco: avocado toast, eggs Benedict, omelets, pancake, granola bowl, you name it. There’s nothing memorable about Cinnamon’s all-day breakfast dishes, but they’re perfectly satisfying (a highlight is the apple-custard-filled cinnamon donut).

In the mornings, slick office workers swarm Cinnamon's tables or drop by for their coffee fix, so a short wait is not unusual during peak breakfast hours. By lunch-time, tourists tend to emerge for a sleepy breakfast.

Budapest Baristas is a small specialty café and breakfast restaurant in Budapest's downtown. They serve seven kinds of bagels (yes, the boiled-and-baked version, but they aren't made in-house), including one with a classic smoked salmon topping. They're tasty, but keep in mind that Budapest is no bagel capital like Montreal or New York. There's also other on-trend international breakfast foods like pancakes, granola bowls, and eggs Benedict. Portions are on the small side — most people can easily handle two plates.

A La Marzocco machine is in charge of the espresso-based drinks, which are supplemented by pricey matchas and filter coffee. Note that depending on who's behind the counter, service can be a little testy here.

Escape the noisy downtown street and enter through the yellow ceramic tiles into the 19th-century courtyard of Fekete, a hip café and all-day-breakfast restaurant. The marble well in the center of the quiet courtyard is one of those Budapest surprises hiding behind many sooty facades. Fekete serves on-trend breakfast dishes, such as shakshuka, granola bowl, and various quiches. Pricey new-wave coffee, both espresso-based and hand pour-overs, are also available along with bottled craft beers to help lift the mood.

Fekete is a very popular tourist destination so expect some wait for a table, especially on weekends. The place is most enjoyable during the warmer months once the spacious courtyard has opened.

Sarki Fűszeres is a cute café breakfast restaurant and specialty store in Újlipótváros, a fashionable residential neighborhood not far from the city center. Breakfast during the warm-weather months is the highlight here, when the trellised outdoor terrace has opened under a canopy of greens. The breakfast offerings feature all the usual suspects, including ham and eggs, frankfurters, and avodaco-slathered sandwiches.

After breakfast, be sure to roam the neighborhood, which is known for its modernist housing stock from the 1930s and 1940s. The most lavish of all is right across the street from Sarki Fűszeres, at #38 Pozsony út, and those that flank Szent István park and overlook the Danube.