Vegetarian Budapest
Bunny’s Favourite Veggie Places in Town
Last year, Bunny had the pleasure of living in lovely Budapest for almost a year. Before that, she had only visited Hungary once, many many years earlier, and was a bit worried about the food situation for vegetarians.
Luckily Bunny’s prejudices were proven totally wrong. She had absolutely no difficulties in finding vegetarian or vegetarian-friendly restaurants in Budapest! Even vegan food was quite available.
That said, Bunny didn’t really frequent any traditional Hungarian restaurants. There was a good reason for that: traditional Hungarian cuisine sucks. At least for vegetarians. Just take Bunny’s word for that.
Check below for a list of Bunny’s favourite vegetarian and vegetarian-friendly restaurants in Budapest. You may note that all of them are located on the Pest side of the city. That’s not a coincidence as the Pest side is much livelier in general. Plus, the Bunny residence was in the heart of buzzing Pest and Bunny rarely ventured across the bridge for a meal.
Bunny's favourite veggie places in one handy map
Breakfast Options
Hipster Bites: Szimply
When Bunny first visited Szimply, she was immediately impressed. The place was cute, the menu looked delicious and, most importantly, vegetarian-friendly.
Szimply is a tiny place, with a simple interior and hipster vibe (Bunny herself would be best labeled as a very mature hipster). They offer interesting and innovative dishes that are tasty and beautifully presented. In addition, their healthy cold pressed juices fit the bill perfectly.
Surprisingly, Szimply does not do any coffee. The solution is to pop by the Kontakt Coffee across the courtyard and grab a cup to enjoy with your breakfast in Szimply. This is also where you can wait for a table if none are available at Szimply. Szimply can get pretty busy, particularly on Saturday mornings when Bunny liked to visit.
Unfortunately, Szimply is closed on Sundays.
Vegan Cafe: Naspolya Nassolda
Naspolya Nassolda (don’t ask Bunny how to properly pronounce this) is an adorable little cafe in the heart of the party district. The atmosphere is miles away from the nightclubs and pizza joints though. Bunny lived right next door, so she was a frequent customer at Naspolya Nassolda.
Bunny’s favourite was the home-made granola breakfast with freshly-squeezed orange juice and coffee. It was delicious, healthy, light and affordable. A perfect start to your day!
Naspolya also offers some great raw food desserts, everything is gluten free and vegan. It is a nice place to linger with your breakfast or afternoon cake treat or a cupcake.
Delicious and Affordable: Börze
Bunny also loved to have breakfast at Börze close to the Liberty square. It is a fairly new restaurant with a stylish and elegant decor. It is also quite spacious, so Bunny never bothered with reservations when she headed there for her Sunday morning breakfasts.
The breakfast menu was quite comprehensive and affordable. Bunny particularly liked the avocado toast and different smoothie options. The service was always friendly and attentive.
2024 update: Sadly, Börse is now permanently closed.
Top Tip by Mr. Bunny
If you order the French toast, it comes plain (savoury) so ask for a side of jam or syrup to accompany it.
For Special Occasions: Kollazs at Four Seasons
Bunny has stayed in the Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace in Budapest only once but was a regular at their sumptuous breakfast buffet. The breakfast is a typical Four Seasons affair: an enormous buffet bursting with sweet and savoury options, freshly made omelettes and excellent coffee coupled with attentive service in a gorgeous environment.
It does not come cheap, but breakfast at Four Seasons Budapest is perfect for those special occasions, such as the first Sunday of the month, or the name day of your second cousin, Bunny says.
You will want to linger here, so go for the extra course you would normally skip and make the most of your morning in the stylish setting. Kollazs gets high marks from Bunny!
Delicious Veggie Lunch Options
Healthy and Yummy: Slow Foodiez
2021 Update: Sadly, Slow Foodiez has now closed.
Slow Foodiez is one of Budapest’s few fully vegetarian restaurants. It is a cosy small place, with some additional seating upstairs. The extensive menu includes vegetarian, vegan and raw food dishes.
The food is excellent all round, tasty and healthy at the same time. It is also innovative and fresh, not just the same old salads and pasta dishes here. Bunny particularly enjoyed the raw sushi at Slow Foodiez. The smoothies were also delicious.
The location is a bit off the beaten track and you will have to wait for your food a bit longer here, but what else can you expect with a name like that? Slow Foodiez is worth the wait.
Excellent Thai Food: Tom Yum Thai
Bunny is a huge fan of Thai cooking and Tom Yum Thai was Bunny’s favourite Thai joint in town. The food was not quite as spicy as she usually likes it, but she loved the convenient location and the friendly service.
The menu is very comprehensive, with pictures of each dish to help you choose. Bunny usually thinks menus with pictures are a bit cheesy but in Tom Yum she found them very helpful. The vegetarian dishes in the menu are plentiful and clearly marked. In addition, you can ask meat or poultry to be replaced with tofu in almost any dish. Bunny always found her dishes tasty, very fresh and as authentically Thai as you can get in Budapest.
Tom Yum Thai is quite spacious, with lots of additional seating upstairs, so reservations are not needed.
Best Vietnamese in Town: Sao
It took Bunny a long time to find this place even though she used to live nearby. Sao is tucked away in a quiet corner of the party district, just steps away from the more raunchy entertainment.
Sao is a nicely decorated place with colourful lanterns and birdcages hanging from the ceiling. The food is excellent - although Mr. Bunny complained about portions being small, particularly for the price. There are several vegetarian dishes on the menu and the staff is also happy to tweak some of the meaty offers to make them vegetarian. Bunny appreciated the fact that they had one of her favourite Asian beers as well.
Please note that only cash is accepted at Sao.
Top Tip
Some otherwise vegetarian dishes come with oyster or fish sauce. Just ask the staff to replace the sauce with their peanut sauce, they’ll be happy to do so.
Quick, Cheap & Cheerful Pizza: A Presto
Try A Presto for excellent pizzas in Budapest. It is a small, nondescript place on a side street next to the Opera. The pizzas are the best Bunny found in Budapest (pizza fungi was her favourite), and they come cheap and quickly.
A Presto is really small so Bunny always opted for take-away. There is no better place for a quick, delicious and cheap takeaway pizza in Budapest. Don’t be lured by the inferior options on the nearby party streets.
Dinner Delights for Vegetarians
Bunny’s Favourite Restaurant: Dobrumba
Dobrumba was hands-down Bunny’s favourite restaurant in Budapest!
It is a simply decorated but attractive place in the heart of the city and it has the best veggie food in town. Dobrumba is not a vegetarian restaurant per se but the creative international menu offers a wide choice for vegetarians and vegans alike.
Dobrumba’s offerings incorporate flavors from Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and Georgian cuisines, accompanied with a good wine list. Bunny’s favourite thing to order was the “select your own mezes” option, washed down with some excellent Hungarian Muskotaly white wine.
Dobrumba’s fantastic, flavourful food and cheap prices make it a very popular place. Make a reservation if you want to have a table, certainly on weekends, although weeknights often seemed pretty busy as well.
Israeli fusion: Mazel Tov
Mazel Tov is another place Bunny liked to frequent for dinner. It offers Israeli fusion kitchen (not kosher) with plenty of vegetarian options. Much like at Dobrumba, Bunny always preferred ordering a host of meze-like dishes in Mazel Tov. And she never left the place hungry, quite the contrary.
The best thing about Mazel Tov, however, was the atmosphere. Mazel Tov has a distinct ruin bar feel to it, with an interesting interior and lots of cute little details. Bunny also found the service quite good.
Mazel Tov is a pretty big place but also popular. It is best to reserve a table in advance if you don’t fancy queueing much (and who does?).
Top Tip
Don’t miss the ruin bars when visiting Budapest! Set up in unused outdoor spaces and dilapidated buildings, these charming bars first started popping up 15 years ago. Although cheap beer remains their biggest draw, many ruin bars offer decent food as well.
Hearty Georgian Fare: Hachapuri
Years ago, when Bunny used to live in Moscow, Georgian restaurants were her go-to restaurants in town. Her love for Georgian food has stayed with her over the years.
Georgian restaurants always offer good options for vegetarians. Hachapuri in Budapest is no exception. It enjoys a prime location in the heart of Budapest and is deservedly popular. On most evenings, you’ll need a reservation to get a table.
Bunny particularly loved their signature cheese-filled Georgian bread (not for people on a diet!), the bean-based lobio pot and the grilled oyster mushrooms. Ordering a number of smaller dishes to share is the way to go here.
Service at Hachapuri is sometimes a bit hit and miss, and the prices are a bit expensive for Budapest but it is a lovely, atmospheric place with excellent food and drinks. Not to be missed in Budapest.
Great Tapas and Cocktails: Vicky Barcelona
Vicky Barcelona is a lively tapas bar in Budapest’s Gozsdu Passage (party central!). It is very popular in the evenings, so reservations are recommended although you can try your luck without one too. They are happy to sit you at the bar for dinner, if they run out of free tables.
Bunny loved the cocktails here! The tapas is pretty good too, even if the menu misses Bunny’s favourite tapas choice: pimientos de padron. Luckily there were enough other options on the menu to fill a vegetarian tummy with food as well as with wine and cocktails.
The service was always very friendly and Bunny even got to practice some of her rudimentary Spanish. If you’re planning to hit the bars in Budapest, this is a perfect place to start the evening, Bunny says.
More Delicious Tapas: Pata Negra Pest on Kalvin Ter
Pata Negra is another popular tapas restaurant, but located a bit further from the former Bunny residence, so she didn’t go there as often as she went to Vicky Barcelona.
The food at Pata Negra was at least as good as Vicky Barcelona, if not better. The number of vegetarian choices was adequate, although Bunny would have been happy to see even more. Everything she tried on the menu was tasty and the wine was good value.
Pata Negra is a tiny and popular place, so a reservation is required. On Bunny’s first visit, she had made a reservation by email, but the restaurant somehow deleted it by accident. The first round of drinks for the Bunnies was on the house because of this mix-up. That is good service, Bunny says!
Excellent Greek Food: Taverna Dionysos
Taverna Dionysos is located close to the famous shopping street Vaci utca, steps from the Danube. It has a lively, Greek atmosphere with an appropriate white and blue colour scheme that Bunny liked.
The food is excellent. There is a separate section in the menu for meatless dishes but Bunny (again) preferred to order a big pile of starters and side dishes, which were delicious and very vegetarian-friendly, instead of going for one big main course. Feta and halloumi cheese feature heavily on the menu but Bunny is a big fan so no complaints there.
Dinner reservations are usually needed here. Dinner can be a bit on the pricey side.
Best Indian in Town: Salaam Bombay
Bunny loves Indian food! Her favourite Indian restaurant in Budapest is Salaam Bombay, just around the corner from the Four Seasons hotel.
Salam Bombay offers specialties from south and north India. As any good Indian restaurant, it has a respectable list of vegetarian dishes on the menu. The menu also has a selection of Indian beers, but they never actually seemed to have any in stock whenever Bunny visited…
Food was sometimes quite a long wait, but it was always excellent. Bunny normally likes her food spicy but found that requesting medium spiciness here was usually enough for her. That is a sign of a good Indian restaurant, Bunny says. So too were the patrons: Indian customers could frequently be seen dining at Salaam Bombay.
Bunny also liked the slightly weird interior, including walls decorated with transparent glass jars filled with exotic spices.
Bunny’s Conclusion
From healthy breakfast to yummy lunch and excellent dinner - all vegetarian and all delicious!
Yes, you can survive, even thrive, as a vegetarian in Budapest. The availability of vegetarian food was Bunny’s biggest concern when she moved to Budapest - and it ended up being one of the nicest surprises about living there!
Bunny’s favourite restaurants in Budapest may not offer Hungarian specialties but all of them have excellent food, good atmospheres and enough options for people and Bunnies who suffer from a “meat allergy”.
