Old Budapest

Old Budapest is no more.  The smell of bubbling goulash, the cool and subtle Tokays, the plangent strains of the gypsy violinists, the dark Hungarians with their sparkling eyes and wry smiles - all are gone.  It is as if a small part of Europe has disappeared off the face of the earth.

True, there is the Gay Hussar just down the road, but it is not the same.  To lose a favourite restaurant is like losing an old friend.  Both are unique and irreplaceable.  You turn up one day, and they have simply vanished, without warning or forwarding address.  You are left only with the memories.

Good restaurants tend to be charged with them.  A favourite haunt will be saved for special occasions, which by their nature will be relatively few.  As a result, the locale becomes an integral part of those evenings; to think of your fellow diners is to think of the restaurant.  Losing the restaurant seals up those memories as if in some time capsule.  Eventually the restaurant becomes an era; do you remember when we used to dine at the Café X? we ask our cronies in years to come.  It is the same with biographies of the famous.  They are as much the stories of the restaurants and cafés they frequented; think of Les Deux Magots, Harry's Bar and the rest.

Buildings may rise and fall, but we soon assimilate them into our mental image of the townscape.  Shops too open and close; but except for those in which we have some particular emotional investment - a barber's perhaps, or a tailor's - we migrate easily and unthinkingly to other establishments when the need arises.  But we notice when restaurants disappear.  It means we must change our habits, explore new possibilities, investigate new worlds.  For a restaurant does not exist in isolation; it draws in the whole vicinity, and becomes a defining landmark for it.

Thus the restaurants I have lost have been painful uprootings.  In one case a closing down has cost me an area of London, since I now have no points of reference.  Il Palio was a simple but atmospheric Italian restaurant in Earl's Court Road, complete with check tablecloths and faded pictures of Siena on the walls.  One day I went past and it was a boarded-up shop-front.  In that instant I lost an entire district of West London.

The Diamond was a cheap and basic Chinese restaurant in Lisle Street.  It had a feel of the Triads about it, with small and angry-looking Chinese running everywhere.  Eventually the Triads seem to have got to it; I went to eat there once, and there was nothing but a wrecked shell.  Thereafter, my Chinatown was the poorer.

And finally there was the Old Budapest.  Never will I forget the luscious coolness of the pressed pike, the sheer amplitude of the smoked goose with its red cabbage and steaming onions, the dry delight of the wines.  Nor will I forget the stumpy little violinist playing Brahms Hungarian Dances - what else? And I will not forget the civilised, old world staff, exiles perhaps, and with all the dignity which that confers.  The Old Budapest restaurant may no longer serve its exquisite food, but for me it lives on.
 
(18.10.87)

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