Kocsis Irma: A tour of our Locals. (A very quick one) - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)

Hörpinty Borozó és Dessewffy Pimce The “Swigger” Wine-Tavern and Dessewffy Cellar

VI. Zichy Jenő utca 4

Accessible from Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út, this is a wine-cellar with a brick-pavement facing. Behind me, a pensioner pulls a small harmonica out of his pocket They serve bread and dripping with onions. In the back, there are roomy wooden tables with benches; it is a typical wine- cellar of the better kind.

It has a more humble counterpart in Dessewffy utca: shabbier, seedier altogether. It also has a place at the back where you can sit at tables covered with oilcloth and there is an ancient radiator fixed to the wall. Harmos delivers their soda, as the black letters spray-painted onto the balloon-shaped soda siphons attest. An elderly gentleman stands behind the counter, and behind him, a wonderful sign inscribed with a blue carpenter’s pencil, the lettering ponderous and lumbering, putting you wise as to credit. Big, drunken, blue letters.

Ó ciTCAi Tabdi TaBDI OF Ó (JTCA

VI. Óuta 37

A favourite haunt of mine for years. For a long time, there was no turn over in staff and they served you páté, cold cuts, sausages, fresh bread and pickles to go with the cheap and very good red wine. They would fill a platter with such delicacies at the counter upon request. It was my favoured place for meeting people, and my friends and I would not mind coming a long way just to be there. The advantages of the place do not strike you straight away as you go down the stairs. At first sight, it looks like a simple elbows-on-the-counter kind of pub. But, in the back, to the right beside the bar counter, there is a corridor that leads to nine or ten pleasant wooden tables with benches separated by partitions, and groups of old craftsmen sitting in grey hats bathed in warm yellow light, conversing over carafes of wine.

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