- There is something about Hungarian cuisine
in that, it's not just about the food,
it's about the experience, it's about being together,
it's not necessarily just about a giant pig on your table,
it's about family and I think that drives me
to wanna bring people together, over a steaming
hot pot of chicken paprikash.
When I was younger, my Hungarian grandmother did not want
to cook Hungarian food.
She escaped the war and so did my grandfather,
so, they didn't want anything to do with the, like,
cultural to traditional ethnic dishes of Hungary,
they wanted to forget it, but at the same time,
they were definitely proud of being from there.
It's a very complicated relationship
and the less information she gave me about it,
the more I was interested in it.
It took a while for my grandmother
to kind of, like, give up those dishes
and as I got into my teens,
then I started, like, prodding at it
because I was super curious,
so, I would cook with her
and she would just give more and more recipes.
When I moved to New York,
I just happened across this raggedy old book,
"The Cuisine of Hungary" by George Lang,
who is a famous Hungarian restaurateur.
He wrote this book on the history of Hungarian food
and it has 100 recipes that are very Old World traditional.
So, I just started flipping through it,
and it was definitely not the cuisine
that, you know, I was raised up on.
It was something completely new
and I just was very intrigued by it.
I had realized there was no more Hungarian representation
in Manhattan, so, I thought,
wouldn't it be really great to kind of bring that back
and preserve the recipes of, like, my grandmother
and that Old World, but at the same time,
make it new for a new generation.
Langos is the Hungarian equivalent
of, like, a New York City pretzel.
It's found on, like, every street corner.
I would liken it to a hybrid of focaccia and a donut,
which together is amazing.
The first time I had langos,
I was just wandering through the streets of Budapest
and I just happened upon this small hole-in-the-wall
and my family was like, you know, oh yeah,
langos, it's a piece of fried bread.
It's coated in a lot of garlic oil,
it's finished with sour cream, fresh kraut,
and sometimes bacon, which sounds like a heart attack
on a plate, but is arguably one of the best things
I've ever eaten in my life.
I immediately said, "I have to bring this back to the USA."
The first time we had tested langos here,
we wanted to keep true to the,
obviously, to what langos is,
but at the same time, you know, not cover it
in sour cream and kraut and bacon.
I like to stick to the classics but also reimagine it
in, you know, in a new way.
So, we just coated it with honey and cheese
and just kept it sweet and salty,
just kinda like the best bite you could possibly have,
and that's how we came up with langos.
Egg noodles are a mixture of Jewish culture
and also Hungarian cuisine.
Egg noodles in Hungary are typically served
with something that's braised.
My Hungarian grandmother would make
nokedli,
which is a version of egg noodle,
it's kinda like spaetzle,
and my mom's mom would make noodle kugel,
which is like a traditional Jewish casserole,
and it has egg noodles in it.
I've always had egg noodles my entire life,
now that I think about it,
and this version is paying tribute
to both my Hungarian and Jewish background.
The egg noodles are made with strictly egg yolks,
some really fine flour and an all-purpose flour,
and that's it, and then, we cut them into squares
and they just kinda get coated in the sauce.
We take garlic, we slice it super thin,
we toast it in butter, and then we add a very concentrated
tomato paste and we just add pepper to it.
The egg noodles have this really extraordinary flavor
and a really nice texture
that we wanted a very simple, kind of like,
grandma nonna sauce
on top of it, and it just gets finished with cheese.
We're just putting chicken paprikash on the menu now.
We take a Sasso chicken, we start by almost dry-aging it,
then we coat it in something like a soy sauce,
so it's just forming a very dry skin.
Then we braise it, and then we flash fry it,
so, it has this really great, crispy skin,
and then, it gets tossed in this paprika paste,
which makes it super vibrant and red,
and I'm trying to make like the best version
of chicken paprikash that I can,
because I want it to be something
that's nostalgic and familiar to, you know,
myself, or anyone else that grew up
with a Hungarian mother, a grandmother,
but with a lot of herbs
and using a lot more floral notes, different spices
that you wouldn't commonly find in every Hungarian dish.
Palacsinta is a crepe.
My grandmother used to make palacsinta every Sunday night.
It would come out in a tray of crepes
with sugared nuts, like five different kinds
of jams and preserves, and sour cream,
occasionally some Yoo-hoo chocolate syrup,
and you just would DIY, make your own palacsinta.
We actually call it extravaganza on the menu
just 'cause it's so outrageous,
and we serve ours with creme anglaise,
a plum caramel, rose-sugared walnuts and cashews,
and salted sour cream,
so, it's kind of like this big ordeal and very nostalgic.
There's something comfortable about people reaching
across the table to grab just spoonfuls of sugar
and cream and fillings, it's just very, it's very homey,
and sometimes, you have this menu
that's really beautiful and can be a little serious,
and we just wanted something playful to add to that.
When I was 9, I told my parents
that I probably wanted to be like an astronaut
or a basketball player, and then I watched
my grandmothers cook and my mother cook,
and I think it was just an accumulation
of all these smells and tastes
that kind of ushered me into the cooking world.
I think I will continue with the Hungarian cuisine.
It's proven to be a real challenge
to try and educate people on a cuisine
that nobody has any clue about,
especially words that are incredibly difficult to pronounce.
So, I think moving forward,
it's more about Hungarian influence
and what that means, not necessarily, you know,
sticking strictly to traditional dishes all the time,
so, yeah, we'll kinda see where it takes me.