Németh Szandra - Saly Noémi: Catering for guests, being a guest. Permanent exhibition on Hungarian hospitality (Budapest, 2016)
35 With the economic boom that came following the 1867 Compromise came the age of rowdy coffee houses that offered live music and variety shows, the zengerai, based on the German and French models. ?e entertainment industry became so germanised, that an official decree eventually set down the required ratio of Hungarian performances. In the 1890s, the orpheum appeared, where guests could have dinner following the show and continue revelling until dawn. Károly Somossy’s world famous institution is now home to the Budapest Moulin Rouge and the Operetta ?eatre. A large entertainment quarter was built in the City Park for the millennium celebrations. While Ős-Budavára (Ancient Buda Castle) offered the very best of all spheres of entertainment, its twin in Buda, the Constantinople in Budapest was even larger and more spectacular, but closed after just six months. An interesting subspecies of musical coffee house was the santan, the Hungarian version of the French chantant , a coffee house with singing. On its tiny stage, clowns and jugglers would perform in between the musical numbers. Its last representative, the Mandl on Nagymező Street, was given a final send-offby the writer Ernő Szép in 1911. ?is same year saw the appearance of the American-style bar on the map of Budapest nightlife, with expensive drinks and an elite crowd. ?e only foods available were sandwiches and salted peanuts or almonds and the most characteristic drink was the cocktail, mixed from several types of alcohol and complete with decoration. Making cocktails requires great skill and practice, and they were prepared by a special barman, the mixer. Two large-scale places of entertainment, what we would today call nightclubs, operated in Budapest between the two world wars, with ◆ Parisien Grill Cabaret, 1930s ◆ Entrance of Arizona, early 1940s
