12 of My Favorite Fashionable Restaurants in Budapest

When I'm asked to recommend a fashionable restaurant, something hot and buzzy but also excellent, I often direct people to Kiosk, which specializes in updated Hungarian dishes. Kiosk has remained popular for more than a decade now thanks to a combination of solid food, panoramic location, and not unreasonable price points (the restaurant is also known for its active charitable work of feeding the city's homeless).

Kiosk's outdoor patio overlooks the Danube, the Elisabeth Bridge, and the neighboring Gothic-Baroque church, while the inside has a dramatically high-ceilinged, industrial-chic interior – the former gym of the prestigious high school of the Piarist teaching order that still occupies the rest of this historical building.

Kiosk aims to please all tastes with a diverse menu but the focus is Hungarian food. I especially like the goulash soup; the truffle-infused creamy egg noodles in the chicken paprikash; the seasonal vegetable stew (főzelék) variations; the schnitzel; and the updated mákosguba, a traditional bread pudding dessert soaked in vanilla custard and laced with poppy seeds. The proximity of Babel, a Michelin-starred dining temple next door and run by the same owner, helps ensure that the dishes are on point. €12-16 mains, advance booking a must.

Head to Mazel Tov if you like the ruin bar concept in theory but prefer things more upscale. This Middle Eastern restaurant inside Budapest's buzzing Jewish Quarter does have a disintegrating facade like other ruin bars, but the inside is a different story: Cheap drinks have been upgraded to cocktails, ham & cheese sandwiches to mezze plates, self-service to hostesses, and weathered furnishings to modern fittings with lush greenery.

The dishes arrive without delay to ensure that tables turn over quickly in this popular restaurant. The shawarma plate and the merguez, a North African sausage made from beef here and paired with beets, tahini, and matbucha, are reliable. You can safely skip the undersized and under-seasoned beef kebab. Cocktails and plenty of Hungarian wines are available. Reservations are a must as the place gets mobbed by people every day of the week. Upstairs, they have a smaller and a bit more upscale restaurant, Balagan, run along the same lines.

101 Bistro is a recent addition to Budapest’s growing group of hip pan-Asian restaurants. It’s the type of place where ear-catching Japanese hip-hop drifts from the speakers and a sleek wood-paneled interior with small tables and low backless stools evoke the dining rooms of Tokyo.

The dishes draw inspiration from the food of Taiwan and China. Like it or not, the concept is small plates, many of them very good. For example the tender pork belly bao, the shou pa soy-ginger chicken, the fried sweet-sour eggplants, and the Sichuan-inspired mapo tofu. 101 Bistro isn't cheap: a dinner with a drink will set you back €40-45 per person or so. After your meal, you could head next door to Nemdebár, one of the most buzzing bars on the Buda side.

As in other big cities, natural wine bars have enveloped Budapest in recent years. The great question with such fashionable establishments is whether or not the hype morphs into self importance and pretension. Cabrio, a cozy, low-lit venue, has so far managed to remain on the right side of cool. Part of its charm is the location on Kamermayer Károly tér, a quiet square in the city center named after the first mayor of Budapest whose statue presides over the premises.

The wine list is pan-European, featuring also Hungary’s well-known natural wine producers such as Hummel, Dorka Homoky, and Péter Nagyváradi. It should go without saying that the food concept is – sigh! – small plates. But the dishes are notably delicious. Especially the grilled and sliced celery root drenched in a creamy walnut-infused sauce, and the tender trout filet topped with a drizzle of San Marzano tomatoes. Open Wednesday through Saturday.

Helmed by the Israeli chef Harel Zakaim, Goli is a buzzing Middle Eastern restaurant in Budapest’s downtown. The restaurant’s moniker pays respect to the Goldberger textile business that occupied the building before the Goldberger family was killed in the Holocaust in 1945 (the facade still bears their name).

As in New York or Tel Aviv, energetic Middle Eastern electronic music accompanies the dishes, most of which are quickly treated to the charcoal fire. The smoked watermelon “sashimi” in olive oil and the charred cauliflower are rightfully popular and there's a deceptively good labneh made from almond milk (Goli is dairy-free). My table’s favorites were the Moroccan “cigar” – tender hanger steak stuffed into in a burek – and the thin slices of ribs sitting in piquant tahini sauce. Also here: cocktails, Hungarian and Israeli wines, and an ethereal milk pudding called malabi. The place is small, advance booking recommended. €70 or so will buy a full meal for two with a drink.

Opium is part of a successful Budapest restaurant group in charge of several pan-Asian establishments, such as Sáo, Khan, and Quí (right next door). The owners, originally from Vietnam and some with a background in fashion, have proven themselves brilliant at creating spaces that might be described with adjectives such as: cool, trendy, fashionable, buzzy, and fun. The interiors are always imbued with good taste, enveloped in greenery and warm wood and filled with catchy electronic music.

What Opium and its sisters aren’t known for is the inventiveness of their kitchens. Instead, the menu is a veritable collage of basic pan-Asian dishes: from Chinese dumplings to Japanese tempura to Vietnamese soups to Thai curries to wok noodles. They're consistently average and a bit overpriced at €15-20. Try veering toward the Vietnamese selections (most of the kitchen staff is Vietnamese) – pho soups and the bun cha, for example. All this to say that Opium can make for a happy time if an atmosphere-forward dinner is what you’re mainly after.