Budapest's Michelin Bib Gourmand Restaurants in 2019

Apr. 12, 2019

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 high-carb, greasy affair. The restaurant's success was immediate: a well-heeled local office crowd and tourists fill Stand25's small tables inside the Hold Street market-hall-turned food-court in downtown. In 2018, the restaurant won a Bib Gourmand by Michelin.

#3 Fricska Gastropub

After training at well-known Budapest restaurants, two young, local chefs, Andor Giczi and Szabolcs Nagy, ventured out on their own, opening Fricska restaurant in 2014. Since then, Fricska has earned a reputation for serving tasty modern Hungarian dishes, and it also won a Bib Gourmand award. The restaurant is on the far end of the party district, inside a below-ground space that manages to be cozy despite the lack of natural light.

Rankings are based on a combination of food/drink, atmosphere, service, and price. The author visits all restaurants incognito.