The Meal At Gay Husar

Being a Hungarian living away from home for almost two decades you'd expect me to be grateful for a taste of home. That I wasn't, more like I wish my memories to have remained rosily taintedly and intact. I had better meals in cellar dives during the communist era. The coarse sandpaper like coating of the deep fried mushrooms made me realise I do have skin inside my mouth. The blob of Tartar Sauce resembled something of a cross between herby cream cheese and cow vomit. My English friend who has never had the good fortune to sample Hungarian cooking outside my kitchen thought the mixed Hors d' oeuvres were lovely. I thought of it as rather tasty, if poor selection of cold pork meats herded into a tiny mount in the centre weren't worth the price. His maincourse of Venison in Paprika Sauce missed one essential element; flavour and had too much of an other; salt. I haven't been able to detect neither paprika neither red wine in the sauce either, though both essential for a game dish cooked in Hungarian style.

I love duck, no I am fanatical about duck, which is why I make weekly pilgrimages to China Town. I wish I had stuck to that habit instead of exposing myself to the deepest disappointment since I first tasted the awful square cut white sponge the Britts call White Bread. My Roast Duck was fried to death. The stringy meat brought biltong to mind, you know the strips of meat the Yenks call jerky. It would have been fine during a wild ride across the Arizona plains, not so much in the Soho restaurant. I have politely asked the Indian waiter to doggy bag it for me, when the Polish manager came over to whom I've said that I was full. (Yup, full of resentment) He asked how the food was and the only complaint I let out was regarding the supposedly mashed potatoes not matching in flavour. These were half-cooked lumps swimming in a smokey puddle that resembled mango smoothy. It didn't just look awfull, but the taste completely over powered the duck's flavour...or would have if it had any. Very bad combination I should say.

We Hungarians are proud of our food looking nice as well as tasting good, we don't resort to fancy irrelevance to tacky our meals up therefore thelonely little red raddish decoration was unnecessarily butchered and and ridiculled by a bit of ground parsley.
Finally, you's think the choice of house wine would be selected the harmonise with the flavours of Hungrian cooking. Their medium to sweet white Chardonay didn't do the job. Neither did the desert, a tiny ball of half-ripe raspberries at £4 a pop.
There were two not quiet redeeming features of the evening; the Red Cabbage on the side. too little too late and the bread that tasted like home. Finally, the cartoons of famous folks on the walls were just about interesting enough of a diversion to survive this poor excuse for a Hungarian meal.