Introduction
Let me start with a confession, I'm a bit of a difficult eater, although over the years, things have improved, but I'm still picky! I have to admit, as I know very well that I'm hard to please when it comes to food (and drinks haha), I won't say too easily that something was really nice and it doesn't happen too often that I visit a restaurant where I will eat everything that's on my plate. Probably that's also a bit caused by the fact that many restaurants offer you a full plate, where a lot of garnish is just not the best combo with the main food.
This means that when I find a restaurant where I have discovered to be a fan of several dishes, I will come back there rather than picking a new one, usually to disappoint me anyway. I rather support the few restaurateurs that don't serve you food that doesn't only look horrible, but also tastes as if it should have been thrown out yesterday.
Enough of that, let's get to the food I do like here in my area!
Local dishes
I currently live in Hungary and I have trouble understanding the language, so often I'm reading a menu and wonder what on earth they mean. Translation apps aren't the best help with this difficult language. The combination of not understanding the actual food that is offered and fear of getting something that I really dislike makes me often stick to simple dishes or the usual restaurants.
The average person visiting Hungary, will tell you they have amazing Goulash here, which is true, but that's not really my cup of tea (or should I try it more often?). What I also noticed is that Hungarians are fans of "savanyú káposzta" or "sauerkraut" as most may know this. I love that too, but actually never eat it with anything other than potatoes served with smoked sausage. That is until my boyfriend told me he ate a sausage somewhere when having a beer with his colleagues, and that he didn't notice any trouble afterwards in his stomach (which is normally the case). He went there a couple more times and told me that I should taste it. So I did.
A local beer garden
When you aren't known here, it doesn't look too appealing to step inside this local beer garden, but you know how these things go, when people talk nicely about your place, more follow naturally. I went there the first time, and I was surprised by how well balanced this simple food is.
Today we visited the place again and the sausage is actually the only thing we order from the menu but our daughter wanted nachos so we got this as a starter:
Can you imagine that you only pay 3 dollars for a big bucket of nachos including 2 different salsas? Usually when you order a starter like this, I'm used to getting a small plate with nachos, and salsa spread over the nachos, often not the most appealing look either. But hey, they're nachos, so I don't complain when that happens. This was probably a full bag of nachos which they served and the 2 salsas were both nice: sweet and cheese flavored.
Of course accompanied with a beer and water and water.
Not long after we received our food: Debreceni sausage with some sauerkraut, pickles and two sorts of mustard. I still haven't discovered the second sort of mustard anywhere else, but it's very nice!
The plate looks quite empty, but this is exactly enough for one person! Every bite should be including a bit of all that's presented on the plate and it's simply delicious.
This dish costs not even 6 dollars and I can assure you, you're full after eating this. Not an expensive lunch, right?
A little bit of background information about the Debreceni sausage
I think for this part, it's best to quote some online information as the only info that was provided to me so far was the name of the sausage. When I ate it again today, I thought it was about time to learn a bit more about it as I was quite curious about the ingredients.
The sausages are heavily spiced with paprika and other seasonings like garlic, pepper and marjoram. Usually they contain tiny pieces of pork fat as well.Source
The sausage is named after a place in Hungary: Debrecen. It's a place I've never been to until now, but this will probably change this summer. This sausage made me curious! Luckily, we can eat this sausage here in our little village as well, so I don't have to travel to eat their famous sausage..
Conclusion
So now you know my favorite local dish, which isn't the most exciting dish as you may expect, but less is more they say! What's your favorite local dish?