In my Menuism article from a year ago on the proclivity of many Chinese and Chinese American tourists to seek out Chinese food wherever they travel, even bad Chinese food, instead of sampling the local cuisine, I asked the rhetorical question "Who wants to eat Chinese food in Hungary?" Having just returned from Hungary, I must now admit that I in fact ate Chinese food while I was there.
However, in so doing, I was not suffering from the "Chinese Stomach" which I described in the Menuism article. Rather, it was due to combination of factors that happened to come together. First of all, being known for racking up a large number of restaurants, I knew people would ask me about how much Chinese food I ate on our recent trip to Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. So while not going out of my way to eat Chinese food in lieu of local cuisine, I did want to try a Chinese restaurant or two on the trip. Then, for our only meal on our own in Budapest, we ended up at a modern shopping mall, West End mall, since we figured there would be a food court with many choices. However our selection was narrowed by the fact that we carried a negligible amount off Hungarian forint, requiring us to find an eatery that accepted credit cards. And it would be helpful to find someplace that had an English language description of their offerings. So when I found that Wok N Go Noodle House satisfied both counts, that was the place for me.
In addition, it really had the most attractive spread in the food court. Probably a dozen and a half different choices in large steam trays, some of which where visually quite enticing. The sesame chicken was extra large pieces of deep fried battered chicken with a glistening sauce and the breaded chicken cutlet were particularly noteworthy. I ordered the stir fried turkey with vegetables, though as things turned out I'm thinking that might have been chicken, not turkey, and perhaps there was an error in translation (though other chicken dishes were properly described). Strangely among the vegetables in the dish was wood ear fungus, something I've never ever seen in an Americanized Chinese fast food eatery. I also ordered the sliced marinated tofu, again an item only found at authentic Chinese restaurants back here in the USA. The surprising thing is that this meal was probably better than the food that you would get at many ordinary Americanized Chinese eateries. I mean it wasn't Panda Express which is pretty good for what it is, but I've had a lot worse, particularly in locales with few, if any Chinese residents.
Interestingly there were two other Asian restaurants in the food court, a Thai restaurant and a generic Asian restaurant, and they both had similar breaded chicken dishes on display. And a good portion of the non-Asian eateries had deep fried items for sale, including one which had something that looked like an entire deep fried sandwich. I can only guess that these were all schnitzel related or inspired, and that the Asian chicken dishes just fit right in. That plus the fact that after decades of deprivation during the communist years, Hungary seems to have adopted western fast food as their national cuisine. (Or as our tour guide said, the best Hungarian food these days is in New York City).
