Budapest

Karma is a lovely restaurant on Budapests Liszt Ferenc Ter. This is a pedestrianised street off of a major road, Andrassy Ut, and close to The Oktogon (Budapests equivalent of Piccadilly Circus). Along this street is an array of restaurants serving international cuisines. Karma is one such restaurant, and I believe there is a second one in the Westend City Centre Building. I only visited the branch of Liszt Ferenc Ter.

We dined upstairs, downstairs there is a bar and tables, this is mainly for drinkers but you can eat here to. There is a more relaxed area at the back with sofas where most people seemed just to be drinking. Toilets are also on this floor and are modern and clean.

The upstairs tables go around the room; there are banisters in the middle where you can look down on the people below. There were five of us eating late on this particular Thursday night between Christmas and New Year and the restaurant was quite busy. The upstairs area was all non-smoking although some smoke did drift up from the floor below.

They had an extensive drinks menu, and most were about UK prices. There was a large range of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails, juices, milkshakes as well as beers, wines and an extensive range of spirits.

For my starter, my friend and I elected to share an Aubergine dip with pitta and fresh vegetables. The vegetables were actually cucumber cut in lengths and slices of tomato. The pitta was lovely and warm. The dip itself did not have a strong flavour; it was creamier than hummus and very pleasant. It was comparatively expensive at HUF 1,350 (approx £4) to other restaurants we found. However, compared to UK restaurants the presentation and quantity was vastly superior. The rest of our group had soups which were large and meaty, practically full meals in themselves and were approximately HUF 8-900 (£2.50). One of my friends soups had whole skewers of meat in them. The guinea fowl soup also offered something a bit different.

The main courses on offer ranged from Wok dishes, pasta and Tandoori style dishes. Meat eaters were far better served than vegetarians (although most restaurants did usually offer two or more vegetarian options) with lots of poultry and game on offer, and some fish dishes. As a veggie, the only hot dish available to me was Tandoor vegetables not exactly authentic Hungarian cuisine! Unfortunately there were no Tandoori dishes available as the oven was broken. I explained that I was vegetarian, and particularly wanted hot food as it was a bitterly cold day, and the only other dishes available were salads (although they looked quite interesting as salads go, it was minus 6 C outside and I wanted hot food!). I asked if they could make me one of the pasta dishes without the meat, and was informed that this wasnt possible as the pasta dishes were ready prepared. I think this is a shame, as it doesnt really take long to cook! He did however suggest to me Honey-chili Malay noodles with chicken and mushrooms without the chicken which I accepted as there was no other alternative. The noodles were spicy and filling, but the dish was a bit samey, as not a lot of effort had gone into adding other vegetables instead of the chicken. We were also charged the full price of HUF2000 (£5.75), which whilst not expensive by UK standards was not really fair by Hungarian standards for a plate of noodles with a few mushrooms in it! One of my friends had Turkey with potatoes and pumpkin puree which looked interesting and I was assured was also very tasty. The Venison and duck dishes also got the thumbs up, I was the only one disappointed with their food. Saying that, all dishes were beautifully presented on contemporary crockery.

We skipped desserts as we were all quite full, and also passed on coffees (although they had a wide selection). Our bill for five people including two bottles or red wine, two bottles of still water and a spirit with mixer came to the equivalent of just under £90. It has to be said that a lot of this money was drinks; to eat is actually very reasonable.

The service was generally very efficient and attentive, and we usually managed to attract a waiters attention without too much problem, there was also no problem with the language barrier and the menus were printed in Hungarian and English. One unusual practice we noted was that plates were cleared as soon as you finished, they didnt wait for everyone to finish, which meant they came to clear our table in three trips.

At about 9pm a DJ came out and played a range of trendy chill-out type tracks, which were quite inoffensive. Although we were seated quite near, the music was not loud enough to be intrusive and added a bit of atmosphere. We saw older children in the restaurant (teenagers) but there were no special meals for really little people so they would need quite eclectic tastes as the food is not plain or simple.