Tomorrow’s post takes us out of Budapest and on our way to Montenegro. So what better way to leave this great city behind than with images of its festival food?
We were lucky enough to be in Budapest on June 21st – the summer celebration day on the Chain Bridge that spills out into the plazas on either end of the bridge. On the Pest side were the traditional Hungarian food booths.

We started with a little snack. Hungary’s new answer to kettle corn, cotton candy or funnel cakes. This baked-on-a-tube doughy treat is a new invention in Hungary. It first made its appearance at a festival in 2003 and has become a runaway hit. It’s called Kurtoskalacs. A basic sweet dough is rolled onto a frame and baked. The baker slides it off the frame and it looks like a very fat paper towel tube. You choose the flavor you want it dipped in (we picked coconut). All I can say is “Move over, funnel cakes!”

After some music and people watching we wondered over to the largest of the food booths. The one with the most divine smells spreading out in all directions.

This wasn’t your basic cart on wheels portable festival booth. This thing was massive. Set up with a clapboard back wall; antique food cupboards for atmosphere; and big jars of pickled everything for decoration.
The menu was beyond our ability to read.

But it didn’t really matter. Everything worth considering was spread out in front of us in three foot wide woks, bubbling away. All we had to do was try to keep our drooling tongues inside our heads as we pointed to our selections.

As we tucked into our choices, I thought about the folks back home who would soon be going to Fair St. Louis under the Gateway Arch. It’s a really great party with lots of food booths. But, I wasn’t homesick, and I didn’t care much that I would be missing out on the typical American festival offerings of hotdogs and french fries.