Caviar and Bull – Deep fried dreams
As an
alternative to our global food scouting we thought we’d go along and try a
dinner at one of the top-rated restaurants in Budapest called Caviar and Bull.
The place has been receiving very hot recommendations from all around the
social channels, and also has a nice website and an international, Maltese, hot
chef to go along with it, so it was definitely worth seeking out. Located in
the ground floor of Royal Corinthia hotel, and about twice the size of the
space as neighbouring Bock Bistro, it definitely has the edge in where the
hotel chain is putting its money over the local serving juiced up Hungarian
specialities. But what of the food?
Evidently
the clientele of the restaurant is made up of about 90% tourists, international
hotel guests and visitors to the city. The menu reads like it was some kind of
global franchise, with signature dishes from around the Med formulated in a
language and style that reeks self-assurance bordering on the obnoxious. My
favourite ones are „ancient tempura” and calamari „rolled in our success” and
the ultimate lobster with all kinds of garnishes and „the rest is history”. In
fact, the only other sister restaurant that I could find of the same name is in
Malta. Perhaps Caviar and Bull and the chef have been a runaway success there,
but calling a dish “rolled in our success” is way too steep for me.
Sorry to
take the wind out of the sails so early on, but all this place reminds me of is
a deep fryer churning out soggy, oily stuff on a random beach in the
Mediterranean. In fact, I’ve never had such overpriced and overinflated fried
stuff ever before. To be honest, don’t
think the food is bad per definition, but I fail to see how it differs in
quality and innovation than your random upscale beach bar in Marbella,
Thessaloniki or Sardinia.
First up is the greeting of the chef. And guess what? He greets us with something he has simply taken from another restaurant. Spherical olives, first devised in Spain by Ferran Adria and currently also used in Tickets bar in Barcelona. So in fact, is he letting us know that he has no imagination whatsoever?
The actual dinner
starts with little balls of creamy, cheesy stuff, sort of like the bolitas de
queso or Spanish croquetas or something similar. The taste is creamy neutral,
the crispy shell not so crispy and the filling meh. Notice the trend starts
here with the deep fryer.
Next up is
the calamari fried in black Himalayan salt with “lime caviar” and herbs. This dish
arrives in a fake newspaper bag, obviously with reference to the street food
roots that it cannot leave behind. The quality of the calamari is good: it is
springy, not chewy, and the black salt crust does give it a slight edge versus
being plain. The lime caviar dipping sauce fails to lift it out of mediocrity.
The third fried
and battered dish of the night is octopus rings with potato „foam”, paprika
„dust” and chili „hair”. You’d be surprised to find that the octopus was also
deep fried and battered sitting on top of a potato cream. This dish is an analogy
of the polpo gallego which also contains rings of potato and octopus showered
with paprika. But it tasted nothing like where it drew inspiration from. Once again,
the key ingredient, the octopus was of good quality, with an average potato
cream underneath and no sign of paprika or chili to give it some sort of kick
or edge.
Fourth deep
fried dish arrives at the table which is a prawn with „ancient tempura”. Tempura
batter is supposed to be crispy, flaky, almost like light crystal shards when
fried. As opposed to this the “Ancient tempura” was falling off the prawns
slightly as well as being too oily and soggy. It felt like it actually was from
another day and age. Condiments once again were the chili and honey sauce that resembles
the produce from a supermarket and again micro hairs of chili.
Eventually
the battering and frying ended and we got another starter of the signature rabo
de toro „artisan” tortellaci. Malta obviously has Italian and Spanish and
moorish influences and this can be seen on the dishes. This one is a big
tortellini filled with very very soft and silky bulls tail meat, almost in a
creamy consistency probably cooked slow and low for hours on end. The richness
is enhanced by a red currant, red wine, shallot cream with pine kernels that is
very sweet indeed. There is not much to cut through the richness and sweetness
unfortunately so we try and go for some left over lime pieces from the previous
dish.
As a main
course: perhaps one of the biggest disappointments of the night arrives in the
form of a sea bass fillet filled with lemon marmalade with a dill velouté and
some deep fried potato crumble. You can see the sad vegetables on the side of
the plate simply boiled and plated and then the highly average fish with the
non existent marmelade and the dill hidden somewhere far in the background.
This was a dish that felt like it had come from the chafing heaters of of a poor
banquet with a sloppy fish, sad ingredients and a forgettable sauce. Whatever
the ancient and historic Maltese recipes prescribed, this was not up to par.
Last, but
not least, we order the chef’s signature dish, the Lobster popcorn with chili
and ginger chutney, spicy mayo, garlic oil and the “rest is history”. In fact,
the “rest” on the plate were pretty intrusive blobs of garam masala flavoured mayo
that didn’t remind us of ginger or chutney, or chili or garlic oil. It was a
bold and “in your face” garnish for the lobster that didn’t help bring out or
enhance the delicate taste of the spiny crustacean. The lobster subsequently tasted
exactly the same as the “ancient” shrimps, breaded and deep fried and coated
with some chili hair. A waste of time and money.
Ok, so we
fell for a tourist trap, it happens. A bunch of deep fried seafood with no real
concept, some elevated marketing talk on the menu, and some mayo and chili
hairs thrown in on the side. As I said upfront, if this happens to me in a nice
little Maltese restaurant on the shore, I’d be happy to pay for it. But here the
whole concept got perverted into some kind of weird fine dining establishment
where the “rest is history”. It just cannot be taken seriously, save for the
seemingly good quality ingredients. The lack of innovative cooking techniques,
the intensive use of battering and frying the seafood, the inbalance in
condiments and the inflated ego all point to the fact that this is a serious
overhyped joint. And hundreds of euros for some lightly battered seafood is
simply not justified. The rest is history.
-->
