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
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: