1936 On the Continent

the restaurant which went to the dogs in the shortest time in the history of the trade. After a few weeks even his tables were taken away by his friends. By this I don’t, of course, wish to say that a foreign visitor would always find a case similar in Hungary. I merely wish to indicated that there is really something “in the air” there. Hungarians are very fond of having a good time. And not only they are fond of it, they have a peculiar talent for doing it. Talking of talents, this particular one is not so uninteresting either. And when I say this I am not referring to the superior persons who carry the art-of-having-a-good-time to a pitch of perfection. (Some of these are natives of Budapest, some are provincial landowners, and they can create such a gay, vital and lovely atmosphere and can lead the band up to such a wild tempo that even the walls seem to rock as they paly.) I am merely referring to the ordinary man of Budapest; even he enjoys night life and its musical accompaniment with glittering eyes and with a mindwhich seem to be full of sunshine and laughter inside. Well, this is that little something, that little plus, which seems to hover invisibly in the air and is noticed by the foreigner on the first night he spends in Budapest.
    I believe you know about the sad fate of the buffaloes. They are a race which is slowly dying out, and apart from a Hungarian sanctuary (at a former royal park in Visegrád) are only to be seen in a few European zoos. The old-fashioned Hungarian revels seem to share the buffalo’s fate. In my youth I have seen a Hungarian gentleman who, according to the old traditions of “fun,” had discharged his revolver into the double-bass, if he was in one of his good moods—and paid for it with an easy heart. And in a provincial town I remember having seen some Hussar officers who broke all mirrors in the place in their “merry mood” and made strange objects out of the spoons and forks. Then they distributed all the contents of the café’s larder; bottles of beer, wine and champagne, cheese, ham and delicatessen among the poor—and paid the bill with the lightest of hearts. These are, of course, romantic memories of a particularly romantic and happy past. But I must say—for the last time—that there is “something in the air” in Budapest. You can only have a real good time in two places in the world: in Paris and in Budapest. But both of them have distinctive tastes of their own.
    Talking of restaurants, let us go to see the kitchen for a few minutes. The kitchen in Hungary is an object of the nation’s particular pride. Brillat-Savarin, the great French wit and philosopher of gastronomy, had said: “It’s only the fine mind who can appreciate culinary arts.” Apicius, a noted Roman gourmet at the time of the Emperor Tiberius, was of the same opinion. If that is true, I must say in all fairness that we Hungarians must be of an extremely fine mind.
    The arts of the Hungarian kitchen were already famous in the past centuries. Not only the people, or the middle class, but even the ladies of the aristocracy have held the art of kitchen and household management in a high esteem. Since our ancestors had settled down in the country of the Four Rivers their gastronomic taste had become the more refined, and the repertory of dishes had become the more and more varied. This simply because the new country had offered them the possibilities of higherculinary arts in the most superior abundance. Writing about Hungarian wines, I have already told you that in prehistoric times most of the land of Hungary was a sea-bottom and of volcanic origin. That is the curious secret of the most interesting taste and flavour of Hungarian corn, fruit and vegetables. The Hungarian peasant eats the best bread on earth. Even Hungarian meat has quite a unique and different flavour from the rest of the world. Hungarian poultry, lamb, and all eatable animals, including game, are reared on a savoury Hungarian grass whose effect becomes so important. I can always taste that difference at once if I am abroad. In America, for example, cauliflower has exactly the same taste as green
paprika
, the
paprika
in turn has very much the same taste as carrots. On the Hungarian table each vegetable has its distinctive taste, the
paprika
, for example, is sometimes so strong that it seems to burn the mouth of the uninitiated. The old cookery-books of the past are witnesses to a great abundance in good food and