You can easily find Hachapuri, located on the Deák tér end of Andrássy street, at the corner of Bajcsy and Andrássy streets. It is 3 minutes walk from Deák tér metro station, and pretty much walking distance from most clubs and bars in the city center - not to mention that the popular Király street scene is only a few blocks away.

Upon entering we were immediately greeted and seated by friendly staff, and we were offered Hanchapuri's extensive menu.

This food menu offers soups, grilled meats, and veggie dishes made in clay pot (goulash looking stuff), Pilaf, Hinkalies (stuffed Georgian pasta/dumplings), many more items too, and finally a good range of desserts. Honestly it was a tough job to make up my mind on what to eat. Everything on the menu sounded fantastic and was crying out for us to try. After about 15 minutes of browsing I decided to start with the Harcho soup, which is a sour and spicy tomato and beef starter.

This soup was really something special and quite a big portion, containing a tomato base, a good dose of dill and lemon, and diced beef. Overall this soup presents an excellent blend of those flaours, and is highly recommended for fans of Hungarian gulyás.

I picked the Hachapuri degustation menu as a main course, simply because it offers a great range of items to taste:

- Chicken goulash
- Eggplant goulash
- Beef goulash
- Duck in Walnut sauce
- Tomato and cucumber salad in Yoghurt
- Georgian Bread
- Basmati rice

The chicken and beef goulash was really sour no wonder I found pieces of gherkins in it, it was reminding me to “csikóstokány” which has a similar taste but the emphasis is on the word “similar” here. The chef was clearly using some exotic spices here that made them taste different though.

The eggplant goulash was a little bit spicy and served cold, it reminded me to an eggplant chutney rather than a goulash.

The Duck in walnut sauce was my personal favourite from this plate. The walnut sauce was made of real ground walnuts was very thick and kind of sweet. The walnuts absolutely dominated the taste which perfectly complimented the duck cubes hidden well under the rich sauce.

The Georgian bread was crispy on the outside and soft in the inside, way thicker and softer than pita breads tasting similar though.

My lunch partner had 4 of those Hinkalies, each of them were different in terms of stuffing. We also learned that one has to eat those with bare hands, so unfortunately I wasn't able to try them but I managed to take a photo.

We washed it all down with Georgian made Grape syrup. Surprisingly it was not too sweet. Syrup in Hungary has a very high sugar content and it is overly sweet in my opinion, while this syrup was just perfect.

Overall I was very satisfied with the food. The service was outstanding, the waitresses knew their menu, the food came on time making this a very good experience. I will surely be coming back. If you want something truly special to taste Hachapuri would be a safe bet.

Contacts:

Telephone: +36 30 822 03 65
Address: 1061 Budapest, Andrássy út. 3
Web: http://hachapuri.com

By Zoltan Veress

About the author: Although I'm not an expat in Budapest, I was an expat for 13 years in various other countries, so I am an Xpat! I can look at Budapest with expat eyes and with those of a local, and the articles in this series about Budapest restaurants and pubs will try to feature both the new hip places and those you – not being a Budapest native – might not know about...

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