Having a Lunch As in the Good Old Days
Would you like to see how a typical citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy has a lunch? Ok, let’s see some minutes of the movie ’Szinbád’ by Zoltán Huszárik with English subtitles.
As I mentioned in a former post, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was very important for the Hungarian cuisine. According to the culinary literature, this age was a turning point in the history of the Hungarian gastronomy. The cuisine became more simple and poorer, but at the same time people and folks of the monarchy had learnt many things from each other.
There is a movie named ’Szindbád’ by Zoltán Huszárik, what is very popular in that group of the Hungarian intellectuals, which loves gastronomy, too. It is based on the novel by Gyula Krúdy, a very succesful writer of the monarchy times, and it is all about an old man, who travels around the country to fall in love with women and to have lunches and diners in the best restaurants, inns, and ’csárdas’.
He Knew What a Restaurant Is
Zoltán Latinovits, the actor who played ’Szindbád’ was a descendant of the very famous Gundel family. His mother was Katalin Gundel, the daughter of Károly Gundel (Charles Gundel), the founder and the first owner of the Gundel Restaurant. Latinovits often said, he was born in a room of the restaurant, just above the table of Gyula Krúdy.
