Németh Szandra - Saly Noémi: Catering for guests, being a guest. Permanent exhibition on Hungarian hospitality (Budapest, 2016)
3 Introduction S ince its foundation in 1966, the Hungarian Museum of Trade and Tourism has organized several permanent exhibitions, which were showcasing one or the other aspects of hospitality. ?e first permanent exhibition titled “Extracts from Hungarian Hospitality” was opened in the first year. After seven years the exhibition titled “Hundred Years of Catering Industry in Budapest” was launched, while the exhibition “From Inns to Hotels” was prepared in 1979. After three years visitors could enjoy the exhibitions on “?e History of Confectioner’s Trade in Hungary” and “Hospitable Budapest” from 1996. ?is current permanent exhibition titled “Catering for Guests, Being a Guest” explores all branches of the catering industry and hospitality at home of a certain era. In 2016 celebrating the Museum’s 50th birthday, we intend to pass on our past and current colleagues’ knowledge onto future generations through this catalogue of our permanent exhibition. Catering for Guests, Being a Guest Catering and the hotel and restaurant trade are just as much an integral part of a nation’s culture as music, literature or science. It has its great figures who create something lasting, as well as its everyday heroes and valiant ordinary soldiers. It has its excellent institutions, which have won the acknowledgement of both their contemporaries and posterity. And there are eras in which everything falls together to enable true success. Our exhibition invokes the golden age of Hungarian catering from the end of the 19 th century until the outbreak of the Second World War. Its title is based on the book on etiquette written in 1933 by restaurateur Károly Gundel and writer Frigyes Karinthy. At home, friends and family would regularly gather around the great dining tables of upper-class homes. ?e household was slowly becom◆ A page with illustrations by Éva Gábor from the book on etiquette providing the exhibition title ◆ Károly Gundel’s apprentice certificate, 1942
