Plea from a desperate friend over on the Other Coast: “Derb—Do you know of ANY Hungarian restaurants left in NYC? I’m in town for a friend’s opening night this weekend…”
[Derb] Cluelessly out of date as usual, I only have a 2003 Zagat’s to hand, and it lists precisely ONE Hungarian restaurant: Mocca, up on 2nd Ave. between 82nd and 83rd. (And this, in a city that–according to Zagat–has FIVE **Irish** restaurants! How many ways are there to boil potatoes, for crying out loud?)
No guarantee Mocca’s still there. 2003 was about the last time I visited the place, spent a happy afternoon getting wiped out on Bull’s Blood. Wonderful food, of course–even the coffee tasted different.
Now I’m getting a Hungarophilia rush. ‘Scuse me, gotta go sit in a corner & read John Lujacs’s Budapest 1900.