Ráday utca: Goulash, Pörkölt and the Herdsmen's Kettle
Why is it significant?
Ráday utca is a narrow street where, in fine weather, half the pavement disappears under restaurant tables and the air smells of onions frying in lard. Walk slowly and read the menus on the boards. Somewhere on almost every one you will find the word gulyás.
Key Facts
| Place | Ráday utca: Goulash, Pörkölt and the Herdsmen's Kettle |
|---|---|
| Address | Ráday utca, 1092 Budapest, Hungary |
| Geo Coordinates | 47.48580, 19.06430 |
| Part of Walk | Coffee, Cake & Paprika: A Budapest Food Walk from Gerbeaud to the Great Market Hall |
| Generated | Generated |
Ráday utca is a narrow street where, in fine weather, half the pavement disappears under restaurant tables and the air smells of onions frying in lard. Walk slowly and read the menus on the boards. Somewhere on almost every one you will find the word gulyás.
The street is named after Gedeon Ráday, an eighteenth-century Calvinist nobleman, poet and passionate book collector, whose library forms the heart of the Ráday Collection, still kept by the Reformed Church in this very street. So the restaurant row of Ferencváros carries the name of a man who loved books more than dinner.
Now to the dish. A gulyás was originally not food at all but a person: a cattle herdsman on the Great Plain. Out on the puszta, the herdsmen cooked beef, onions and later paprika in a kettle over an open fire, a thick soup that could feed a crew for days. In the nineteenth century, when Hungarian nationalism was looking for symbols against Vienna, the humble herdsmen's dish was promoted to national pride, proudly served in grand restaurants instead of French sauces.
And here is the trap every visitor falls into. What the rest of the world calls goulash, a thick meat stew, Hungarians call pörkölt. Their gulyás is a soup, with potatoes and vegetables, eaten from a bowl. Add sour cream to a stew, usually with chicken, and it becomes paprikás, served with little dumplings called nokedli. Order the wrong one and the waiter will forgive you... but he will remember.
Everything on those menus depends on one red powder, and the best place to meet it is a few blocks west. Leave Ráday utca at one of its side streets and head west to Fővám tér, by the river. Look for an enormous hall with a patterned roof of glazed tiles: the cathedral of Budapest food.