WLB: Street kitchens have a steady following in Pest, but around the Balaton representatives of the genre are few and far between. Matróz, which opened in Füred this June, also counts as a novelty. Were guests enthusiastic about your place?
Orsolya Strasser: We have spent every weekend between May and October in Füred for years, and prior to the opening we had been watching the town very closely to find out what people were looking for. We though Füred was ready for a kitchen like this. We had the express aim of creating a place with a laid-back vibe, and after drawing the lessons from our first summer season we can say that guests got the message. We were fully booked every evening at the weekends, we hosted many birthday parties and events for friends, and a lot of guests came to Füred already aware of Matróz.
WLB: How much have the original concepts about Matróz changed since the beginning? How have the guests inhabited the place?
O.S.: Our original plan was to open an eatery very much in the vein of the street food trend, but soon after the opening it turned out that people preferred Matróz for dinner, so we introduced a prominent fine dining line along with the street food options. Most people came to us in the evening hours after a day spent at the beach to eat and drink wine. So in the end it didn’t turn out to be the kind of place where you drop in from the beach during the day like we first planned. Only a few guests turned up randomly, most of them came specifically for dinner. It soon became apparent, mainly from the number of tables booked for the weekends, that a place like this was very much missing from Füred.
WLB: When you first opened you had sea fish, prawns and steak on the menu, among others. Have you tweaked what is on offer since then?
O.S.: Basically we kept everything as it was, but we added simpler dishes, such as fish and chips and hamburgers, to our weekly menu. Prawns were a big favourite, and salmon and tapas were in high demand, too. By the end of the summer many of our guests had become regulars, who phoned ahead to make sure their favourite dish was waiting for them when they got here.
WLB: Providing live music in the evenings was also among your initial plans. How much did this take Matróz in a Balaton disco direction?
O.S.: We brought DJ music, but at the same time we saw that people wanted to hear other tunes as well. It was the express wish of a lot of our guests that since we had introduced a new trend in Füred, we should also bring in Füzi bácsi. I didn’t think this was a massive compromise compared to our original ideas. It was clear that many of the guests loved him, and his performances always had a great vibe, so some nights we invited only him, other nights we had totally modern DJ music. In the case of the latter we first tried a British pop-rock repertoire, which we also fine-tuned as we went along.
WLB: Did you also manage to draw in Füred locals, or was it mainly holidaymakers who came?
O.S.: Some guests came from Füred, but most of our clientele was made up by young people from Budapest who had a holiday home here or who had popped down for the weekend.
WLB: How has this year’s extreme rainy summer affected business at a freshly opened place like yours?
O.S.: Interestingly enough, the restaurant was full when the weather wasn’t too hot or too cold. On hot days people lingered on the beach until late in the evening, and on chilly days they didn’t leave the house. In retrospect I’m thankful to my business partners for installing proper insulation on the terrace because this way, despite lower temperatures, guests could still enjoy sitting on the roofed outdoor patio, which was shielded from three sides. Of course, due to the frequent rainy weekends, much fewer people visited the Balaton in general, and we felt this, too.
WLB: A lot of initiatives have been launched to extend the autumn and spring seasons at the Balaton, the Nyitott Balaton event series, for example. What do you think, how successful can such an attempt be?
O.S.: I definitely think there is a demand for it, and we also had plans at the beginning of the summer to stay open at the weekends in September. But these plans were thwarted by bad weather. Since 20 August we have pretty much had only one sunny weekend, so there was no point in staying open. However, next season we would like to open as early as May. I agree that we should try to extend the summer season, but it cannot be denied that the weather is still a major determining factor at the Balaton.
