bars & cafes | thehub.hu | guide to budapest

Blaha Lujza tér [map]
Pest South, XIII, Blaha Lujza tér (M2 or T4/6), 3 mins

Rating: 9.0/10

Arty but not too pretentious, spacious but not daunting for agoraphobics. Jelen is well worth a few hours of your life, even if it is full of people carefully wearing their scruffiest brown jumper.

It has everything you might need for a good night out, a well-stocked bar with draught beer and eight different pálinkas, a kitchen which serves nourishing meals until midnight, and even a little munchies-kiosk for later on. This is my favourite corner – a little duck-egg blue cubby-hole rescued from the village shop of your childhood, selling everything you craved as a stoned teenager. It has chocolate bars and scones; tobacco and skins; and since this is Hungary, hot wine, Unicum and túró rudi too.

The monochrome walls are covered in well-designed posters, all of which say the word ‘jazz’, but all I can hear from the dance floor in the other room is Smash Mouth and Deee-lite remixes. They often host concerts here though, and the high ceilings make for a good acoustic. Most nights however, all you hear in the main room is excitable magyar chatter, easily heard over the music from next door.

It’s obvious someone’s thought hard about how Jelen should look, but with bikes in the entrance, and the occasional dog wagging under the table, it’s still unfussy and welcoming. They could do with being a bit fussier about the loos, mind you. Jelen may be full of sociable folk discussing their favourite Jan Svankmajer films, but they still pee on the toilet seat and clog up the sink.

Service: 6.5/10
Atmosphere: 8/10
Value for money: 7/10
What people we know think: 8/10

Lucy F