Pickles at the Central Market Hall
Wednesday, May 3
A popular sight of the city is the Great Market Hall (Nagy Vásárcsarnok) in the IX. District. The building consists of a steel structure and is reminiscent of a basilica. The special architecture makes the market hall a real excursion highlight in the city. If you only come here to shop, you will find fresh vegetables, meat and sausages or one or two souvenirs from your holiday in Hungary such as paprika paste, duck liver or Hungarian liqueur.
By now, the market hall is no longer an insider tip, but popular with tourist groups from all over the world. What is less known, however, is that the market hall also has a basement in which there are other market stalls. Although there are several stairs leading from the main hall of the market to the basement. However, these are all very inconspicuous and even if you have found one of the stairs, they do not look very inviting.
Those who dare to follow the dark stairs down to the basement will find a corridor full of stalls selling pickled vegetables. The pickled cucumbers, peppers, onions and sauerkraut are typically Hungarian and a popular accompaniment to Hungarian dishes. Here, in the basement of the market, there is a huge selection of different types of pickled vegetables. They can either be bought in small mason jars or in large buckets.
Since Christoph and I had already eaten the pickled vegetables as a side dish in several restaurants in Budapest, it was great to be standing directly at one of the sources of Hungarian delicacies and admiring the large selection. Unfortunately, just the day before, we spontaneously bought a 750g bucket of sauerkraut in the supermarket and anyway we only had a few days left here in Budapest to eat it up. So we just admired the colorful preserving jars, but unfortunately we couldn’t take any of the products with us. Had we stayed in Budapest for more than just a few days, we would have definitely stocked up on all kinds of vegetable jars!
