Siempre en mi corazón

Buena Vista Café

Havana-tinged café adds a touch of Caribbean charm to a square already heaving with theme bars and expat poseurs

A FourBees review

It’s official: Budapest’s Liszt Ferenc tér is now wall to wall solid café. An uninterrupted block of cappuccino and pizza stretching from Andrássy út to Király utca, with even the Mûszaki Könyváruház (Technical Book Store) joining in, doing a trade-off with Café Vian next door: You can put your tables and chairs outside our shop if your waitresses wear T-shirts advertising our books.
The trouble with having so many cafés, seats and babes filling the square is that, through an embarras de richesses, we are faced with a difficult choice between each item in the homogenous trendy blobby mass.
Selection tends to be by a process of elimination. One selects according to where’s there’s a spare seat or where there’s a higher proportion of tottie per square meter.
The criterion of negative selection also holds true: If one place holds bad memories, of a surly waiter or warm beer, then the visitor might be tempted to shift a few metres to the left or right and find him/herself in another theme or bar or both.
However, the latest arrival stands apart.
Even though sandwiched between Pest Est Café and Incognito and sharing the same bright yellow paintwork as Pesti Est, the Buena Vista Café is quite unique in the square, nay in all of Hungary, with its stylish, elegant and tasteful interior design.
Rarely does one find such quality and my usually loquacious Hungarian companion was stunned into silence by the sheer wonderfulness of it all. On my first visit we sat outside in the jostling pavement terrace and thus didn’t really appreciate the full impact of the place.
I had a foofy pink grapefruit juice (140 forints a decilitre) and my companera, Senorita Mojita had her usual, but was shocked when her Mojito (Ft1,150) arrived with a lurid red cocktail cherry bobbing about on the minty green surface.
As the café is named after the film of the band, book, T-shirt and suburb of Havana, Cuba, there’s plenty of rum available - but it’s the best: Havana Club Anejo reserva and Havana Club White rum blend with apricot brandy in a lethal Cuban Ice Tea cocktail (1,300 forints) which would knock you for six if supped in the Caribbean heat but slips down a treat in the muggy Carpathian Basin.
Bar snacks, gorgeous looking salads at around Ft1,200 and Magyar desserts and torta (Ft550) are available for nibbling on while you check out the self-conscious talent moseying by.
Go inside and there’s a massive restaurant up the wooden stairs lined by a dry-stone wall resembling something I once attempted to build in North Yorkshire, up near Robin Hood’s Bay.
Check it out if you’re ever rambling in the vicinity, it probably resembles a pile of rubble by now, but the good intentions were there.
The décor combines tasteful cream walls with prints, dried flowers, ethnic chic raffia borders and healthy yucca plants.
Having nearly suffocated while attempting to eat this overly fibrous plant mashed up while on a jungle trek near Topes de Colantes in Cuba, I was relieved not to find it on the menu which offers grilled meats and lots of innovative vegetable dishes.
On the ground floor café a stylish minimalism prevails and there is a partitioned-off sofa area for chatting and sipping latte macchiato (Ft290) while Gloria Estefan bellows her brand of right-wing Miami commercial-salsa through the speakers.
The cellar also holds surprises for those who venture down into its cool depths. Here the bar is a stylish air-conditioned labyrinth, fortunately not some grungy, smokey sörözô (beer hall), and on every table stands a draught beer tap allowing guests to serve themselves and tally up their consumption with a little electronic device offering ‘half’ (pohár - glass) or ‘one’ (korsó – half-litre mug) of Heineken.
Get there soon before the sad dipsomaniac expat males of Budapest discover this little-known feature and drain the barrels dry.
I tried a Buena Vista lemonade (Ft590) with mint (Ft590) which resembled genuine Mojitos served in Cuba more than the cocktails did as they were refreshing but not strong and the three quarters of lime ensured I’ll not get scurvy this summer at least.
My companion had a very good fresh fruit salad (Ft490) and we both agreed that you can never have too much of a good thing -Buena Vista Café is really something special.

Buena Vista Café
Budapest – District VI
Liszt Ferenc tér 4-5
Getting there: Tram 4, 6 or Kisföldalatti (Little Underground metro 1) to Oktogon
Tel: (+36 1) 344-6303
Buena Vista website
Open daily noon-1am (terrace closes at midnight)

THE STING
Décor 8/10
Cuisine 7/10
Service 5/10
Wine List 6/10
Ambience 7/10
The Bees' Knees 7/10