Budapest's Michelin Bib Gourmand Restaurants in 2020

By Tas TobiasJan. 6, 2020

Bib Gourmand is an award by Michelin to "small, charming" restaurants that offer excellent food at good value—technically, two courses and a glass or wine or a dessert for $40 or less, excluding tax and tip. Currently, the below three Budapest restaurants can boast a Bib Gourmand. Here you can check out Budapest's Michelin-starred restaurants, too.

#1 Petrus Restaurant

The sleepy outer part of Budapest's District 9 is an unlikely place to boast an upscale French restaurant, so it's against the odds that here hides Petrus, the Bib Gourmand-awarded bistro of owner-chef Zoltán Feke. The dishes fall somewhere between bistro fare and fine dining: the 7-course tasting menu approaches the latter, the a la carte offerings the former.

#2 Stand25 Bistro

When in 2017 Szabina Szulló and Tamás Széll (a European Bocuse d'Or winner and celebrity-chef in Hungary) announced that they were leaving the Michelin-starred Onyx restaurant to venture out on their own, one didn’t need a business degree to predict success. The idea of Stand25 Bistro was to prove that traditional Hungarian fare can be more than a gut-busting, high-carb, greasy affair. The restaurant's success was immediate: a well-to-do local crowd fills Stand25's tables each day. In 2018, they even won a Bib Gourmand by Michelin.

#3 Fricska Gastropub

Following stints at well-known Budapest restaurants, two young, local chefs, Andor Giczi and Szabolcs Nagy, struck out on their own, opening Fricska restaurant in 2014. Since then, Fricska has earned a reputation for outstanding modern Hungarian dishes, and it also won a Bib Gourmand award from Michelin in 2017. The restaurant is located on the far end of the party district, inside a below-ground space that manages to be cozy despite the absence of natural lighting.

Rankings are based on a combination of food/drink, atmosphere, service, and price. The author visits all restaurants incognito and pays for his own meals and drinks.