Budapest Central Market Hall

Hey guys,

Here are a bunch of pictures from my trip to the Central Market Hall (I actually went a while ago, but there's a pretty serious time lag on these posts).  Right next to the river, the whole market is housed in a gorgeous, somewhat art nouveau styled hall that's absolutely awesome.  Three rows of food vendors on the main floor, arts and crafts plus food and drink bars, and the basement is full of boutiques.  All in all, one of my favorite places in the city so far

The market as a whole (one of three aisles on the main floor).  I was there pretty early so it wasn't too crowded (plus it's not during the tourist season), but I hope this gives a sense of the scale of the place.  I really love large buildings, big rooms--maybe a vestige of when I used to hang out in the theater during my free periods in high school ;)

As you can see, it's not exactly a flea market or farmer's market--the shops are all solidly constructed, and have the same vendors in them every day.  Still it really gives a fun sense of a bustling marketplace

::sigh:: on looking at it, this picture isn't a great one to convey the feel of the place.  Ahh well.  But don't worry, I'll take better pictures when I head back!

I managed to find one of the ubiquitous sausage/meat shops and snap a picture when no one was in the way.  Does that not look amazing?

By the way, those of you that have been to Salumi with me in Seattle know that one of my favorite sausages is the smoked paprika . . . well, needless to say, they're kind of fans of it over here too

I love spice shops!  This wasn't even one of the best ones, but I thought the angle was good to take a picture

A number of spices, most notably saffron, are really cheap here.  Almost certainly going to pick some up when I head back!

The ubiquitous chili decorations, present wherever a shop is selling paprika or paprika-flavored goods . . . so like every third shop.  This shop actually had them for sale--I wonder if the other vendors buy from him?

And then I headed upstairs.  All that walking around had made me hungry (although I did grab a fantastic apple to munch on from one of the first-floor vendors)

Upstairs had a bunch of arts and craft places, along with manufactured goods (decent prices on leather gloves, may be time to retire my current ones).  But most importantly, it had food and drink bars.  Places selling street food and other Hungarian foods that all looked awesome.  Plus there were a bunch of places offering small tastings of Tokaji (a very famous Hungarian wine--"The king of wines and wine of kings") and other with huge selections of palinka (Hungarian fruit brandy).  Felt a bit early in the day for drinking, but definitely filed those away for a later visit

Most important of all, there was a place selling langos.  For those of you who don't want to read the wiki article, langos is flat Hungarian fried bread, which is then topped with a myriad of things--but, for true traditional Hungarian, anything other than sour cream and cheese is unnacceptable

Haha even before he knew that I would be going to a food market, when I asked my Hungarian friend at work what to do on my weekend, he immediately replied "eat some langos"

P.S. I just noticed that the third pic on the wiki article "Langos sold at a street vendor" was almost certainly taken at the same shop I visited (which makes sense, really).  Should have snapped a picture to prove it!

Anyways, lest you think that all I did was look at or eat food, there were also some fantastic things for sale upstairs.  Definitely catching my eye were the crystal and porcelain vendors--fantastic prices.  One vendor (not the one pictured here) had a set of six sake-cup-sized crystal glasses for around $30.  Tempting, to be sure.  But seeing as I'll hopefully be back to the Market before I leave, I wasn't in any hurry to buy

And last but not least, I headed downstairs.  There were some interesting shops and boutiques, nothing really special until . . .

That's right, I finally found an Asian food mart!

Cost me a bit more than I would have wanted to spend, but my pantry is now stocked with sriracha, shoyu, sesame, curry paste, dried mushrooms, dried noodles . . . all the good stuff.  Plus, even when not cooking Asian, sriracha tastes good on everything)

All right well, that seems like enough for one post.  May or may not get another post up before I leave for tomorrow to go to Romania.  Yup, driving to Romania--10, maybe 10.5 hours, all by myself.  Gonna be a whirlwind trip though, to be sure--picking up the car at 8am tomorrow, driving all day.  Then picking up some stuff from the Bucharest office at 8am on Monday and it's back to Hungary!  Well, that's if all goes according to plan, at least.  Anyways, if you don't hear for me for a few days, don't worry I'm not dead--I just got lost and am driving aimlessly around the Romanian countryside.  I should be back by like Thursday

Noah out