At the beginning of summer, we teamed up with Balatoni Kör to launch a competition for the title Beach Food of the Year with the aim of inspiring beach food stands all around Balaton to break away from the cheap lángos-frozen hamburger patty-pork stew direction. The desired change is in its early stages yet, but it has started at least: there are a couple of eateries that use their surprisingly small spaces to make delicious food any self-respecting restaurant would put on their menu without thinking twice about it.
- Beach food is not an instrument of the devil; it’s about serving high quality food to anyone who wants to eat at the beach
- The beach food category is pretty vague, so it can include lots of things: any dish made from fresh, excellent ingredients can qualify as beach food, and if it’s made using local produce, that’s even better
- The members of Balatoni Kör came together at the beginning of summer at Keszthely’s Fröccsterasz to demonstrate how they think it should work in practice, announcing at the end of June that they would award the title Beach Food of the Year toward the end of summer. The outcome of the competition will be revealed on Tuesday, on the MTV programme Balatoni Nyár
- Eight dishes dreamed up by a wide variety of restaurants have been entered into the competition, and all of them deserve props for doing away with some nasty old traditions
1/7
Chef Beach – túrós csusza
Zamárdi’s Chef Beach remained hidden from us until a few weeks ago, and the memories are so fresh we didn’t even have time yet to dedicate a separate article to it. Close to Zamárdi-felső, but far away from the Main Stages of popular lakeside festivals, a couple of young entrepreneurs opened a joint that is somewhere halfway between a bistro and a food stand. They have burgers with proper meat served in home-made buns, but for this competition they decided to whip up their on version of the popular Hungarian dish túrós csusza, which a tasty mix of home style noodles from 10 eggs, fried bacon bits, sour cream, cottage cheese and crisp vegetables.
Price: 1,590 HUF
2/7
Code Zero – barbecue spare ribs
Code Zero in Csopak takes beach food so seriously that it’s located a few metres form the water with one of the most popular Balaton beaches full of Hello Wood installations to one side and scheduled boats coming and leaving to the other. The menu is as fixed as the timetable of the ferry: you can choose some kind of meat (or goat cheese if you’re vegetarian), a side dish and salad. The dish they decided to join the competition with is their barbecue spare ribs, which would even please Frank Underwood, regardless of whether they were made by his good friend Freddy. Code Zero would be hard to put in the beach food stand category because of the prices and the fact that several of their dishes have a preparation time of 10 hours. Nevertheless, the above average quality they provide could be an example to follow for other waterfront catering establishments.
Price: 2,490 HUF
3/7
Kalóz – Harcsa & Krumpli (fish&chips)
Situated on Fövenyes Beach, Kalóz has undertaken a brave mission: they’ve raised their prices a little bit, but in return they’ve promised to get rid of some bad beach food stand habits. They have signed a talented chef, who is an instructor at the cooking school of Gundel – he helps them make savoury pancakes and locally produced syrups every day as well as dishes grilled outdoors on weekends to replace the banished duo of lángos and hake. Just an example: one time they served sushi as a side dish with the catfish fillet. Their competition piece is Harcsa & Krumpli, the Balaton version of the classic fish & chips. It is made from catfish, which unfortunately doesn’t come from Balaton thanks to the sorry state of the fish stock in the lake. It’s quick to make, and it’s proper beach food, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see the Argentinian hake be displaced by the favourite fast food of the British working class in the long run.
Price: 1,300 HUF
4/7
Karám Büfé – lángos bites
Balatontipp.hu was the first to spot the great, but super simple idea Gyenesdiás’ Karám Büfé used to reinterpret the concept of lángos (we’ve already talked about what the secret of their light, yet crispy lángos could be). Lángos made professionally from top-notch ingredients has an unquestionable place in the beach food catalogue, especially if it comes with three dips, a garlicky, a spicy and a ramson-flavoured one. A couple more Karám Büfés on the Balaton shore would surely make a lot of beachgoers happy.
Price: 700 HUF
5/7
Matróz – vegetarian burger
We visited Matróz on our field trip to find our favourite burgers, and we were really surprised to see how serious they were not only about the original, meaty version, but also the vegetarian variety. The bun, which has beetroot (!) incorporated into the dough, is baked on site, and the goat cheese is supplied locally, so it’s only the vegetables that are not from the Balaton area. Matróz is not a beach food stand, it’s much more of a refined establishment for getting drinks and eating dishes of excellent quality, but the cuisine is as trendsetting as that of the other pioneers leading the food stand revolution.
Price: 1,990 HUF
6/7
Neked Főztem – baked capia peppers with mutton, goat milk sour cream, tomato salsa and rye bread
Without a doubt, one of the hottest newcomers of this year is the duo of the Julia Childs of Zánka Beach and her very own food stand. The message written in chalk on the blackboard in front of the eatery says the place is only open from noon because they’d run out of everything before then if they opened any earlier. The mangalica burger, which we also fell in love with, is worth going on strike for, but Orsi says fried sausages are also a must on the frequently changing menu. They deserve an extra gold star for striving to make creative dishes mainly from local ingredients, like they did with this one. Every ingredient except for the capia peppers and the celery come from the surrounding area, and the relatively plain mutton is transformed by the slightly tart sour cream. This is the future of beach food, no question about it.
Price: around 2,000 HUF
7/7
THE Bar – goat cheese with pear and rucola saland and honey dressing
When we rounded up the best marina restaurants last year, we already knew the bar of Tihany Sailing Club (THE) was a great place. The dish they chose is pretty simple, but it definitely fills a niche, and its main ingredient is from a local producer based in Szentantalfa. If you grill exquisite goat cheese and add some light salad to it, you’ll get a summer dish that won’t make you fall asleep, but will give you enough energy to go for a swim between Tihany and Füred. Yet, THE Bar will never become a conventional beach food stand: the only way to reach it is by boat, but the dishes and the main concept could be worth following to make sure that gyros on lángos and the like are not your only options at the beach.
Price: 3,490 HUF
Széplak-tató restaurant has made a lángos in the shape of Balaton for the competition, but sadly they couldn't quite make it to the mass production stage, so we were unable to test this oddly shaped creation. We can show you a photo of the prototype though:
