Fresh View On Dining

For Alain Losbar, head chef at Sofitel Budapest Maria Dorottya’s Paris-Budapest Café, the day perhaps unsurprisingly starts with breakfast, an often overlooked meal for a busy head chef but one that Losbar takes as seriously as any other. 

“The reputation of the hotel is at stake and the breakfast is the first judgment from guests,” says Losbar, who hails from Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. “If the breakfast is below standard, it will start guests on a bad day and they’ll never come back.”

Thus, his first challenge was to teach his strong team of 60 how to make breakfast, including how to make omelets properly, as well as “posh” eggs.

He is also taking his experienced team of Hungarian chefs back to basics, applying the basic principles of French cooking because the basis of cooking, at least European, is French, he says. 

“I don’t want to shock people, we’re taking it step by step,” says Losbar. “There are a lot of things to respect, especially the ingredients, which above all need to be fresh.”

Paris Budapest Café specializes in French classics in a new style, with the same principle applied to the Hungarian cuisine it offers.

“I’m not saying Hungarian food isn’t good but it is too rich. We’re making it in a slightly lighter way with the same ingredients.”

To find the best goulash, Losbar organized a cooking competition in Sofitel Budapest Maria Dorottya. The participants were the staff of the hotel, and everybody made a special soup from his or her recipe. Then they voted for the most delicious gulash. Szilvia Szendi-Joó, reservation officer of the hotel, had the best recipe, that’s why it was selected for the restaurant’s menu as well.

“Nobody in the kitchen was making it the way I thought it should be made,” he says. “The one we adopted comes from one of the team’s grandmothers.”

The restaurant has a comprehensive selection of French and Hungarian wines, and he admits he is a fan of Hungarian wines.

The much-traveled Losbar is also a big fan of Asian cuisine, particularly Thai, and a feature of the restaurant is fusion cuisine with Asian influences enhancing classically European-style fare.

Paris Budapest Café seeks to differentiate itself through “lower prices for better food” and the goal is to make sure the restaurant’s 120 seats are just about full every day, running at two-thirds capacity for lunch and a full house for dinner. Just over a year after opening, the restaurant is 80% towards that goal, asserts Losbar.

However, five is the magic number for him. Five ingredients are sufficient in any single dish, which applied correctly can stimulate the palate without overwhelming it. He also developed an interactive tasting concept known as Five Senses in his previous posting for Accor, the Novotel West in London, which will come to Budapest once Losbar feels that the restaurant is up to the standard he requires. Five Senses was used for team incentives, client entertainment, staff training as well as celebrations.

Meanwhile, for the first time in Hungary, he is using the concept as a training hotel at Sofitel Budapest.
“I do the five senses every day with the team to work out if the food is too salty or not salty enough by the smell and appearance of the food,” says Losbar, who also extends the concept to the sales team.

“If they are going to sell products, then salespeople have to have confidence in what they’re selling. People won’t buy if the sales team don’t know what they’re talking about.”

To get on the Five Senses when it comes to Budapest, one prerequisite is required: participants have to love food. Paris Budapest Café adopts the open kitchen approach. Sofitel Budapest opened for business in 2005.

Fresh and hot

The best of fresh Hungarian produce prepared in a Mediterranean style, alongside imported produce from Southern European countries served in an upscale informal bistro-like setting, characterizes Peppers!, which opened in the Marriot last fall. 

“Our food is prepared with three to four touches of the hand; it’s fast and fresh without going over the top on presentation and doesn’t come to you already going cold [like in some places],” explains Wolfgang Koller, director of operations at the Marriot.

“It’s fresh from the market and hot from the kitchen.”

Peppers! works as an all-day restaurant where the guests are encouraged to eat just as much as they wish and whenever they want, and is geared to serve the changing needs of both business and leisure diners.

“Eating habits have changed radically and the day is not as structured as before,” Koller says. “People eat when they’re hungry, often skipping lunch and going for something to eat at 3pm.” 

Hungaricums such as goose liver, Mangalica ham and pork, Racka Lamb, grey horn cattle and goat cheese from Teglice share the menu with Spanish and Italian salumi, Mediterranean fish and seafood. The produce is enticingly displayed like in a deli and the salumi is cut on a traditional Berkel slicer. 

The pike-perch, a well-known Hungarian specialty, is, however, imported fresh because Koller feels that consistent quality is not available from local suppliers. Pan-roasted with lemon-olive oil dressing, it tastes remarkably like a sea fish.
The design was carried out by the London-based pair of creative agency Blue Sky Hospitality and RDD architects. It is inspired by the red and gold colors of Hungary’s famous paprika and peppers from the Szeged and Kalocsa regions but is a million miles away from the traditional rustic look.

The wine list features 50 Hungarian and international wines, 30 of which are available by the glass including many premium ones. Wine writer David Copp, author of Hungary: Its fine wines and winemakers, assisted in creating the wine list, which marks a departure from the traditional verbose style. 

Peppers! is adjoined by the hip AQVA lounge, whose design is based on the rivers and lakes of Hungary and features a water collection from around the world including the super-premium Hollywood favorite Bling H20 that is finished with Swarovski crystals. 

The next step, once the hotel’s renovation is complete, will be to open the terrace on the promenade outside the hotel.
While he rates his near neighbor Sofitel’s Paris Budapest Café as being one of those in the upper echelons of the Budapest dining scene, Koller is benchmarking Peppers! against the city’s successful restaurants as a whole.

“We want to be in the top five within a year. Peppers! is a freestanding restaurant which happens to be located in an hotel,” he says, adding that the majority of patrons are likely to walk in from the street as opposed to from within the hotel.
Hotel guests are still deemed important and there is a live camera link-up between the open kitchen and Channel 1 on the TVs in the guest rooms."
 
Source: Budapest Business Journal