Cafe Deryne Budapest
Café Déryné is on the Buda side of Budapest, a few minutes from the Tunnel at the Chain Bridge.
It is an ideal place to sit in after or before a walk up/ down the Castle hill to the Royal Palace or if you decided to walk through the Tunnel on foot. Cafe Deryne has been very recently renovated and it looks trendy and eclectic. If you have older editions of travel guides (e.g. a Lonely Planet before 2008), you will get the description of a totally different cafe, which was a homey downtrodden traditional cafe and confectioner’s. The new Cafe Deryne is a cafe-bistro-wine-cellar etc. fashionable, anything-but-traditional place.
Cafe Deryne basic info:
Address: Krisztina tér 3. 1013 Budapest
Phone: 00-36-1-225-1407
Coffee: Santo Domingo
The café has free wifi and plugs under each seat, which is still a rarity. The interior is a mixture of a cigar bar, a café and a plasma TV lounge, “the lounge area resembling something out of an Ambercrombie & Fitch store (leather armchairs, dark wood, an open fireplace) ” (food police blog on Café Déryné).
No doubt, Cafe Deryne has many elements mixed and “the choice of piano bar, café, bistro, wine cellar, white table-cloth restaurant and lounge all under one roof may sound like overkill, but the ultimate effect is that it is hard to imagine Déryné empty at any time of day or night.” (Adrian from Chew), adding that “the real charm of the place is that it creates the cultured atmosphere of a cosmopolitan restaurant without the stuffiness of a super-fashionable bar or downtown tourist trap.”
As for the prices: “reasonably priced – we came away spending Ft 3,000 a head on soups, entrées and lemonade/beer (no wine).” Express lunch (portions are on the smallish side) is available between 11:30 and 15:00 and comes at about 1000 HUF. However, reading through the reviews and comments, the atmosphere and the location got more points than the kitchen and the service.
See its location on the Budapest tourist map (check the Cup icon in the middle):
photo from Chew.hu
Read more about the Best Restaurants in Budapest, or the Best Cafes in Budapest.
We are overseas visitors, and we went to Cafe Deryne with some old friends on a Sunday afternoon for a chat, a cafe and some snacks and cakes. The cafe was not full, and we got a table without any problem. The decor struck me as confusing, there were mixed stylistic elements jumbled together, the spaces were messy and ill-defined, and the atmosphere was noisy and not really suitable for a quiet conversation. The reception by a young blonde woman with a ponytail was very friendly and professional. However, the service was disorganised and below par. Several different waiters inquired at several different times about our order, some orders were simply forgotten, others were brought up to 40 minutes later, drinks and food arrived without any coordination. Several items were simply not available, and it took 15 minutes or more to be informed of this. Waiters were not communicating with each other, and seemingly no-one took any responsibility for looking after our table. Even getting the bill took a real effort, we had to ask three different waiters and had to wait half an hour before we were given our bill. Part of the confusion seems to be the result of an ill-conceived attempt to introduce a US-style table service where drink waiters, food waiters and bus-boys work as a team. In this instance, it was an abysmal failure: there was no coordination, and in the end, nobody took any responsibility for delivering good service. The quality of the food was average to passable.
It is hard to escape the impression that in this establishment no-one is really an expert in running a restaurant, and this includes the owner and the managers as well. The staff are generally hard-working and eager to please (see below!!), but good will alone is not enough. It is interesting that the Cafe Deryne seems to do rather very well despite offering a questionable quality product at rather high prices. My friends tell me that this is not so surprising in Budapest today. The clientele of the Deryne Cafe is largely composed of the kind of unsophisticated but well-off ‘nouveau rich’ Hungarians for whom being seen in the right places is far more important than the quality of what they receive.
And a brief afterword. A few weeks later we happened to meet one of the waiters from the Deryne who told us about the Dickensian employment conditions in the cafe. Apparently some of the staff work there illegally, without being given a contract or being properly registered. Many others work 13-14 hour shifts, with no breaks. The management treats these mostly young workers in an excessively authoritarian and exploitative fashion. For example, they can be charged on the spot cash fines (deduction from their wages!!) for even the smallest omission. Needless to say, these conditions represent a gross violation of applicable European and Hungarian employment regulations. It will be interesting to see what happens when somebody decides to take the high-profile owners of Deryne Cafe to court for their gross disregard of European employment laws and regulations…
sorry but i think you went on an off day. or maybe they just didn’t like you. i’m in budapest at the moment and have been several times. the decor is part of what makes the atmosphere. from the eclectic collection of books and furniture chosen to create different ambiances is part of why i went back. the service was perfect and i own 3 restaurants in italy so i’m very critical of restaurant service all around the world. as for the illegal workers….have you been in a cave for the last 30 years? welcome to the restaurant business. this is common practice all around the world mate. hope you are able to remove the stick and return to Deryne.
tourist:
“i own 3 restaurants in italy” – Hahaha!
“maybe they just didn’t like you” – WTF, you must be kidding!
George Gross said it right, it”s a messy, noisy place. But if you are a ‘nouveau rich’ looking for a restaurant with good food where you can being seen, it’s the right one for you!
Btw, I think the prices are not so high and the food is better then the average!
I think its a uniqe place for sure. The service has a little problem its true,but the atmosphere is amazing.. We love it!
I live in Budapest. I never set foot in Déryné. Yesterday evening we had 1 birthday to celebrate 15 people Déryné reservation is made and confirmed by the Déryné itself.
We were seating in the basement before a group of cigar smoking in a cloud of suffocating smoke. IMPOSSIBLE to dine in such conditions!! A big blond man not very courteous to us more attempts to dismiss the fact. No attempt at a solution, or discussing possible. To 21:30 on the sidewalk we improvised birthday in another restaurant that has demonstrated responsiveness and the service.
It’s a faux nouveaux-riche-place. They did not even get the (engraved) signs right, they read “Plat du Jur”. It’s sad that money doesn’t go together with taste :( There are many elements in that cafe that could be likeable, but unfortunately its just fake :( Maybe I am too strict with them, but I am from Vienna, which has a genuine coffee house tradition and I just dont like imitations…
Egyetertek a kritikaval. Ujgazdag talalkozohely. Megis: a minöseg messze jobb a hasonlo nivoju lokaloknal. Ambiente: mindenböl valami, a vegen semmi. A borpince viszont homogen. A szemelyzet valtozik gyakran. A vezetöseghez nincs lehetöseg kapcsolatot kapni. Marcius 15-en kiskutyankkal taskaban (mint mar evek ota sokszor) vacsorazni erkeztünk. A Rezeptionistin szabalyosan kiutasitott, hogy kutyaval legfeljebb a teraszon. Azt mi utasitottuk el, aztan allo asztalt az ajto mögött kinalt fel, 85, 65 eveseknek, azt sem, aztan a barpultnal. Mindannak ellenere, hogy szamtalan asztal szabad volt. Aztan ugy tett, mintha a fönököt felhivna, pechere közben megcsörrent a telefon. Igy aztan ott hagytunk csapot papot, s minden valoszinüseg szerint tobbet nem megyünk oda.