The battle of cafés in Budapest
Posted by TheShot on 11 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: Café Society, Foreign Brew, Starbucks
As with many countries where Starbucks hasn’t yet deployed their green mermaids in a D-Day-like marine invasion, Budapest, Hungary is still waiting for the wave: portfolio | The battle of cafés in Budapest - Eston. Budapest has long been rich with cafés, but according to the Hungarian online financial journal, Portfolio.hu, Starbucks may finally open there next year — and quite predictably under the banner of Pizza Hut and KFC. (Mmm mmmm, nothing says “good coffee” like the Fincsibe sandwich.)
The article notes some of the differences between Hungary’s café culture and what many of these international café chains offer. For example, Starbucks has thrived by repackaging a Mediterranean coffee culture for Anglo-Saxon markets. However, Starbucks has wisely not set foot in Italy or Portugal — knowing the folly of putting their native culture through a milkshake blender and regurgitating it back to the locals at three times the original price.
Budapest’s first café opened in Buda (the hilly, palacial side of town to the west of the Danube) in 1579 — partly due to the local Turkish influence at the time. Vienna-style coffee was then the norm before the advent of espresso machines that popularized Italian-style cafés starting in the 1930s.
Although there were no “Seattle-style” coffee shops in Budapest when I last visited there in 1995 (unlike my visit to Prague the week prior), I am positive they must have some by now. Budapest and its people were some of the most romantic, Western thinkers I’ve met in all my travels.
2 Comments »
on 11 Jun 2007 at 8:55 pm -05:00T 1.Jason said …
Shout-out to the Budapest cafe scene… Getting a meal at the KFC, Burger King, etc… in Budapest is so incredibly boring. There are so many interesting cafes in Budapest. Luckily, western fast food tends to be located around the fringes (and of course in the tourist streets: Vaci Utca) of the trendier places to go: Liszt Ferenc ter, Raday utca, etc… new ones popping up all the time.
on 11 Jun 2007 at 11:48 pm -05:00T 2.rob berghmans said …
hi,
just have your site on my links list. i like it a lot. i sometimes wonder where you got all this info from. impressive.
by accident i’m helping people starting up an espresso bar in budapest. maybe a caffènation styled one, but it’s way too early to give some more info right now.
if i have some more details i drop you guys a line.
rob