Budapest's Seven Michelin-Starred Restaurants In 2021

In 2010, Costes was the first restaurant in Hungary to earn a Michelin star. Today, despite the fact that Budapest boasts many Michelin-starred places, Costes still has a special cachet. The restaurant is once again helmed by Portuguese chef Miguel Rocha Vieira, under whom Costes first won its Michelin accolade and who cut his teeth in the kitchens of the legendary Spanish chef Ferran Adrià.

Budapest’s latest Michelin-starred restaurant, Essência is the project of the Portuguese-Hungarian husband and wife duo, Tiago and Éva Sabarigo. Before venturing out on their own, Tiago was head chef at another decorated establishment, Costes Downtown, while Éva came from the hospitality industry. Essência is a casual fine dining restaurant: the high-ceilinged ground floor features exposed brick walls, plush mid-century modern furniture, and bare tables.

Stand Restaurant is the fine dining project of local celebrity chef-duo, Szabina Szulló and Tamás Széll, and follows the success of Stand25, their highly acclaimed casual restaurant on the Buda side of the city. Here too, their success was almost immediate: accolades quickly poured in, and the restaurant won a Michelin star in 2019, less than a year after opening.

If you think the decades-old food trend of all things pickled and fermented and foraged has run its course, think again. Currently, one of the most popular restaurants among Hungarian diners is Salt, a downtown establishment which wouldn't be wrong to call the "Noma of Budapest" as it seems to have adopted much from the playbook of the famous Copenhagen restaurant which pioneered the genre. In 2021, Salt earned a star from Michelin.

Babel is a Michelin-starred restaurant in the heart of Budapest's downtown offering a classic fine dining experience: the hushed, dim dining room has only a dozen tables, all set with white linen. Babel serves dishes inspired by Transylvania, the chillingly beautiful, mountainous region cradled by the Carpathians and known for its long and contentious history (today, it's part of Romania with a sizeable Hungarian community). The proof that this is more than empty marketing slogan is the young head-chef himself, István Veres, a Hungarian native of Transylvania.

Unlike its competitors, Borkonyha, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Budapest's downtown, doesn't put special emphasis on the traditions of Hungarian food — the dishes here wouldn't seem out of place in fine dining restaurants around the world. Instead, Borkonyha's secret lies in its technical expertise: they serve up colorful, visually impressive plates that verge on the artistic. What does lend a local angle are the more than 200 types of Hungarian wines skillfully selected by Wine Director Krisztián Juhász.