Porhászka László: The Danube Promenade - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1998)

Ernő Vécsey played the piano in the bar, which was famous for its exorbitantly priced drinks. More nightly entertainment was provided by two beautiful actresses, the blonde Csöpi Salamon and the dark-haired Lenke Szőnyi.

On the side of the Thonet Court overlooking Vigadó tér, at the corner of Mária Valéria (today Apáczai Csere János) utca, the Pilsen Beer Hall operated until 1945. Its huge terrace was packed with guests on a fine summer evening. On the front giving onto the Danube there was the former (Hits or, under its new name, the Dunacorso, a restaurant- cum-café that became so fashionable under the management of Lajos Paulin from 1940, that it served as many as three hundred suppers a night. The kitchen was in the basement from where a dumb waiter brought the meals to the restaurant level. When in Budapest, operetta composer Ferenc Lehár would often sit here. At night György Feyér played the piano. He would later become the celebrated bar pianist of the Hotel Waldorf Astoria in New York.

The elegantly furnished Café Dubarry on the promenade also had a terrace on the esplanade.

Needless to say, the Dunapalota also had its own restaurant with an open-air section on the side toward the Eötvös statue. Lajos Martiny played the piano, accompanied by his own ensemble during the establishment’s popular five-o’clock teas. Next to the Dunapalota, on the ground floor of the former Lloyd House was the Café Mignon, also with a terrace overlooking the Danube. Inside in the evenings Antal Gorody-Goitein would play pieces by Gershwin with so much virtuosity that many of the Music Academy students became regular visitors to the café.

In the early thirties the Hangli was also taken over by new management. In 1933 the new tenants, the Rónai brothers, converted the open structure into an elegant café and restaurant, which could now serve guests all year round. Gourmet buffets attracted the visitor with their rich selection from the early morning to the late night hours.

The banqueting hall of the Vigadó featured events with such musicians as Jenő Hubay, Ernő Dohnányi, Zoltán Kodály, Béla Bartók, Pablo Casals and Arthur Rubinstein. In 1929, the king of jazz, Paul Robeson himself gave a concert here. The memory of concerts of an earlier period given by Ferenc Liszt is kept alive by a marble relief on show to this day inside the building, which was made by Fülöp Ö. Beck in 1935. To please the significantly increased

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