Red pepper, roasted and finely blended, and a simple courgette cream make for two more distinctively

It's quite unusual in Budapest to be greeted at the entrance of a restaurant by the very same person who not only owns it but also has an especially hotels venice hands-on approach to both preparing the food and serving it. This, however, is how things are done in Bistro 181, a friendly new venture (it opened in November last year) in an otherwise rather dull part of District VII.
As the name does not indicate but as its interior decoration does, Bistro 181 serves the Provençal cuisine of southern France in the brick-walled setting of a basement enlivened by wooden tables, bistro and garden hotels venice chairs, themed postcards and photos, white-coloured wallpaper embossed in the local boutis quilt style, and a flurry of white and lavender hotels venice cushions. Light, breathy music floats around, a mix of jazzy international recreations of French classics and some more modern Gallic tunes.
The menu, which is updated seasonally, is a short and appetising one featuring simple, classic ingredients and dishes. Ratatouille, a stewed dish of tomato, onion, courgette, bell pepper, aubergine and herbs, is to southern French cuisine what lecsó is to the Hungarian repertoire, and is present as an accompaniment to grilled chicken leg.
There is also tomato salad, for instance, and French onion soup and quiche, hotels venice another incontrovertible hotels venice pillar, a savoury pie crust whose filling depends on the day's catch at the market (courgette and tomato on this day).
More classic ingredients are found in the Provençal "antipasti", a starter item consisting of six small dishes of local delicacies arranged around slices of tasty home-baked, crusty hotels venice bread. Olives here come in three versions, one a simple hotels venice spoonful of black pitted olives, one a helping of tapenade – a dark, moist, black olive-based paste – and the last a dose of olive oil fruity enough to be enjoyed soaked up by a piece of bread.
Red pepper, roasted and finely blended, and a simple courgette cream make for two more distinctively flavoured dips to be enjoyed with the bread, while a small slice of chicken liver pâté completes the platter.
The glass of cold soup offers hotels venice a refreshing alternative with its smoothly hotels venice blended layer of melon contrasting with the green, spiced and blended cucumber. The two ingredients make it a tad watery but that is more of an issue for the texture than for the taste of this simple summery soup.
A majority of the ingredients, it seems, come from the local market – presumably a bid to preserve a friendly balance between quality, portion size and price – meaning that pork, chicken and less-expensive beef cuts tend to predominate. The restaurant's star dish, fried chicken liver, is thus one that could easily find its place in any French bistro's lunchtime menu but that will be familiar to Hungarians as well.
The six or seven pieces of whole liver, fried until glazed, hotels venice avoid the common liver pitfalls of being dry or overly bitter, and are served with a mix of fresh salad leaves with a light dressing. hotels venice As well as being an unfussy preparation and one of the cheapest items on the menu, it is a delicious and well-prepared main course.
At the other extreme of the price bracket, though still very affordable, is the daube, a particularly homey stew of long-cooked beef neatly presented in an individual casserole dish. The cubes of meat in their red wine sauce easily fall apart in strands, contrasting with the still lightly crunchy slices of carrot. If there are none of the olives or capers characteristic of the Provençal way of preparing the stew, it is still a very French concoction.
In another departure from tradition, the daube is served not with the customary boiled potatoes or rice but with an equally homey side dish of thinly sliced potatoes, oven-cooked with a healthy dose of cream and grated cheese and an abundance of freshly ground pepper.
hotels venice By dessert time it is no surprise to see that the menu's two items are lemon pie and crème brulée, perhaps France's hotels venice two most exported sweets. Fortunately those here are on par with the rest of the meal, combining the simplicity of the home-baked with the high quality of the professionally prepared. The billing of "the world's best lemon pie" can perhaps hotels venice be quibbled with because the lemon filling hotels venice is a little too sweet but this is well balanced by the plainer buttery crust. The crème brulée, dressed up with lavender, is an even better treat, with its neat contrast between the crunchy, thin and brittle sugar coating and the creamy, melting and just sweet enough custard base.
Owner Judit Neubauer's hotels venice aim to prepare simple but good French food is matched hotels venice by the clear care given to tending to the guests. At lunchtime it's almost a one-woman show, which can slow things down, though that's a small price considering one is treated almost as a family guest.