What's Your Blood Type?
- Joanna
- 10 hours ago
- 7 min read
Next up: The Budapest Food Tour.
Now, anyone who knows me knows I LOVE food tours. I do them everywhere, in every new city, in every country. They’re usually one of my favourite ways to further understand a city... because food tells you so much about culture, history, class, geography... all of it.
Sometimes, anyway.
And yes, before anyone asks, I had mentioned multiple times beforehand that I was a vegetarian. I’d even temporarily abandoned veganism for the sake of “the experience” because I didn’t want to be completely excluded from everything. The guide assured me there would be substitutions along the way.
I believed her.
The guide seemed nice enough and had apparently only been leading food tours for about two months. She was fairly young but seemed quite confident. Unfortunately, she also had 15 people on the tour, which feels like a lot for someone still learning. In my experience, once you get past 8 or 9 people, food tours start to turn into chaos. You spend half your time trying to keep everyone together...
And that's kinda what happened...
We all met at the Central Market Hall, which was absolutely packed. Apparently, around 30,000 people pass through there every day. The initial issue was the pace. We moved through the market at such a painfully slow speed that my legs genuinely started aching from standing around and shuffling forward inch by inch. It almost felt like we were trying to kill time rather than actually experience the market. And it’s not even like we were constantly sampling food while wandering around. I could understand lingering if we were moving from stall to stall, tasting different specialties and actually doing something. But most of the time, we were just… standing there.
Loitering. Observing. Occasionally, pointing at something and then continuing to stand there.
In fact, there were moments when we stood there for so long that I almost bought food just to make the time pass. There were the biggest strawberries I think I’ve ever seen in my entire life... and all I wanted to do was reach out and take one. But I behaved. I didn’t buy anything, because I knew there was a lot of food still ahead of us.
I'm lying. I bought a Diet Coke.
Our first tasting was downstairs in the market, where we sampled pickled onion, pickled watermelon, pickled tomato, pickled cauliflower, and pickled plum. Apparently, Hungarian philosophy is: “If we can grow it, we can pickle it.”
Then we crowded into a tiny space near a staircase and were handed a small biscuit thing that tasted suspiciously like something assembled from a Red Lobster biscuit mix. While we nibbled on that, the guide launched into a long explanation of Hungary’s wine regions, while all I could think was: Please let us sit down.
We’d been standing and shuffling for so long.
Did you know Hungary has 22 wine regions? I didn't. Did you also know that 80% of their wine is consumed domestically? Right here in Hungary! They don’t like to export much of it, which makes it feel like a hidden world you only really experience properly when you’re here. One of their most famous wines is a deep, bold red called Bull’s Blood.
*note to try it! Sounds interesting.
And yet… we didn’t actually get any wine while chatting about wine. That probably would have made the whole standing experience significantly more tolerable.
Finally, one of the women on the tour said exactly what everyone was thinking: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could actually sit down and enjoy something delicious?”
Correct.
Our Food Tour hero ✔️
We ventured back out onto the main road and had a brief stroll before we were all squeezed into an empty, narrow hallway-like space. The elongated room had enough tables and stools for everyone to sit down... and we were all handed slices of three different types of salami. The Scottish couple I was sitting with were thrilled because they ended up eating my portions too. As for my promised vegetarian substitutions? Nada.
Ok. Shitty...
But... no problem.
I'd rather have no salami than some salami.
What I really wanted was one of those swirly spiral potato thingies on a stick I’d seen earlier. That would have been nice, right?
Then came lángos, which were delicious... fried dough smeared with garlic sour cream, and topped with shredded cheese. It reminded me of a Beavertail, but more on the savoury side. I read that it is widely recognized as a "calorie bomb" street food... and I couldn't agree more. Thank goodness we all only received a quarter of each one.
Then out came the pálinka.
Pálinka is Hungary’s traditional fruit brandy. Hungarians can (legally) make homemade pálinka, which surprises many visitors, since home distilling is illegal in many countries.
But there are rules.
~ You must be an adult.
~ The fruit has to be your own (or legally obtained for personal production).
~ The still has to be registered with local authorities.
~ There are limits on how much you can produce tax-free for personal consumption.
~ You cannot legally sell homemade pálinka without proper licensing and commercial approval.
Our unofficial challenge was to drink it without making an immediately regretful facial expression. I managed it.
While eating the salami and the lángos... and drinking the pálinka, we were all still sitting in that strange little corridor room with no windows. It wasn’t really a food tour experience in the way you’d expect. There was no wandering from restaurant to restaurant, no gradual tasting your way through the city. Instead, it was more like... stand around for a long time, shuffle a bit, then suddenly get herded into this small, enclosed room to try three things in a row.
At least this time we had chairs.
Eventually, we moved back out onto the street again... and our next culinary delight was chimney cakes... which are like sweet breaded tubes. Tourist stores put gelato or Nutella or cream inside, but locals only have the breaded part... and they come with either vanilla sugar, cinnamon sugar or walnuts & sugar.
Then we stopped for four different varieties of sausages...
It was during the sausage stop that one of the women spoke up and asked, “Is there anything for our vegetarian?”
The guide looked genuinely startled. Either she had completely forgotten about me or had quietly hoped I’d survive the entire tour eating side dishes. She disappeared for a minute and came back carrying…
Wait for it...
Wait for it...
Wait for it...
Two deep-fried mushroom caps.
WTF? What the ACTUAL f**k??
Anyone who knows me understands what a tragic culinary moment this was. And I couldn't even complain because I'd only said I was a vegetarian. I hadn't gone into depth about which vegetables I would and wouldn't eat. How much of a pain was I supposed to be? You know that there are over 1000 different types of vegetables in the world... and I end up with deep-fried mushrooms.
My life is hard.
Those got distributed off my plate quickly.
The final stop was wine (yay!! finally!) and goulash. Everyone else received big bowls of goulash... and I was handed scrambled eggs mixed in a red sauce. The wine more than made up for my egg delight... so I won't complain anymore.
To make matters worse, I didn’t have any small change on me... and the restaurant couldn’t break my bill properly... so I ended up tipping far more generously than I intended.
Errrr....
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Definite Room for Improvement
So no... not one of the better food tours I’ve done.
Budapest itself? Fantastic food city.
And last... but definitely not least: Vampires & Castles Tour.
I hadn’t properly explored the Buda side of Budapest yet... but the moment I crossed over, I loved it. The entire area felt regal, dramatic... and so historical, with its steep streets, old stone buildings, towering castles, and dim alleyways.
All I could think was: "Perhaps Count Almásy came from one of these castles." My obsession with The English Patient remains eternal. I can’t help it. It’s still my favourite film of all time.
This is the sad truth though... slightly shattering my romantic illusions...
"László Almásy (1895–1951) was a Hungarian aristocrat, desert explorer, aviator, and intelligence officer who served as the inspiration for the protagonist in Michael Ondaatje's novel and the 1996 film The English Patient. While the film portrays him as a tragic, romantic figure, the real Almásy was a complex, largely asexual or homosexual explorer."
I refuse to let reality completely ruin Ralph Fiennes for me.
No. No. No.
My tour was still about an hour and a half away when I crossed the Danube, so I decided dinner was probably a wise idea. I found a quaint little restaurant whose entire décor was devoted entirely to 1970s rock & roll. I ordered a delicious gnocchi dish that turned out to be so enormous... and so heavy... that I ended up having to pack half of it up for later.
When I stepped back outside to head toward the meeting point for the tour, I looked up and saw the most extraordinary double rainbow stretching directly across the Danube over Pest. It was honestly one of the most stunning, breathtaking things I’ve ever seen. Everyone had stopped. Nobody could stop taking photos. Neither could I.
And the tour itself?
Brilliant.
The guide was absolutely committed to the atmosphere. She was dressed entirely in black, wearing a long cape and carrying an old lantern like she’d stepped directly out of a gothic novel. When people approached to introduce themselves and confirm they were there for the tour, she would casually ask them their blood type.
By the time she got to me, I was ready. I told her I was probably “80% merlot,” and without missing a beat she announced that I sounded like the most delicious person on the tour.
Excellent start.
She led us up through the winding castle streets as the sun slowly disappeared, telling stories about Vlad the Impaler, executions, torture, medieval superstition... and Countess Elizabeth Báthory... the infamous noblewoman rumoured to bathe in the blood of young women in pursuit of eternal youth.
The darker it became outside, the better the entire experience got. And the views! OMG... the views! The lantern light. The old stone staircases. The cold evening air. The dramatic castle walls towering above us. It all felt haunting in the best possible way. One of those tours where the setting itself becomes part of the storytelling.
And unlike some guides who sound like they memorized a Wikipedia page, our guide fully performed the material. She had timing, humour, dramatic pauses, ridiculous vampire jokes ready at all times... the whole thing felt theatrical without becoming cheesy. Honestly, she was probably a drama major at some point because she was phenomenal at holding people’s attention.
I genuinely didn’t want the tour to end. The more stories we heard and the further we wandered into the dark streets of Buda Castle, the more immersive it became.
Highly recommended.
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