There’s Goulash and Much, Much More

Serious eaters have a rare opportunity this week at an event called A Taste of Hungary, tonight through Saturday evening at California Bistro in Anaheim. Hungarian cuisine is one of the world’s greatest, and this is your chance to sample it as prepared by a master chef visiting from Hungary, Denes Nemeskovi. It’s about time this cuisine surfaced around here, even if only for a few days.

Hungary’s cuisine is a hybrid, just like the Magyar race that inhabits the dusty puszta, or plain, that makes up the bulk of the country. Turkish, Slavic and (more important) Viennese influences are responsible for the development of this rich style of cooking, which features ruddy paprika sauces, tiny dumplings, a wide variety of pickled peppers and, in my opinion, the most seductively irresistible desserts on the planet. Loosen your belt one notch before you go.

California Bistro is affiliated with the Best Western hotel chain, as is the Hotel Korona in Budapest, where Nemeskovi works as executive chef. He is an imposing man, and you can observe him behind the giant buffet line that the restaurant has set up on its second floor. I spoke to him before my dinner through the hostess/interpreter, Judit Hutiray, and learned a great deal about the state of Hungarian cuisine today.

For one thing, lard, the traditional cooking oil in Hungary, has fallen into disfavor for obvious reasons. Chef Nemeskovi uses safflower oil in these preparations. For another, Hungarian cooking is being internationalized much as American cooking is. The privatization of industry in Hungary has led to a veritable flood of restaurant openings, and the development of yet another nouvelle cuisine.

But don’t expect Hungarian nouvelle to be light. Sour cream and meat juices run heavily through Nemeskovi’s dishes, which are better suited to Eastern Europe’s climate than to Southern California’s. The chef chose a menu that he thought gave a good account of his cuisine, and I couldn’t agree more. But one flaw is the lack of the sour salads, notably cucumber salads, that Hungarians eat obsessively.

He couldn’t find the right cucumbers, he said, so he didn’t want to serve any. I appreciate his integrity, but something acidic is sorely needed to balance the richness of these dishes. Make sure to order a bottle of Egri Bikaver, a hearty red wine imported from Hungary; either that, or bring your own cucumber salad.

California Bistro’s upstairs room, where the dinner is being served, has been cheerfully decorated with Hungarian flags and there are cloth Hungarian place mats on all the tables. Dinner can be had two ways, either a la carte, where you are served at the table, or buffet style, where you serve yourself. It may be more elegant to dine a la carte, but if you want to taste everything at this dinner, you had better go through the line.

Unfortunately, there’s a disappointment at the beginning. A dish called lowland salad is described as containing cabbage, corn, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, pepper, onions and Hungarian dressing, but the concoction I tasted had omitted the cabbage, corn and cucumber. The Hungarian dressing, I regret to say, turns out to be an appealingly sour version of Thousand Island.

There are two appetizers, however, both great. The chef brought the cold one from Hungary himself, a divinely rich goose liver mousse reminiscent of the best French pates. The hot appetizer, called halibut Bakony style, is rolled-up fillets in a sour cream sauce with onion, red pepper and mushroom. The only thing that qualifies it as an appetizer is the fact that Hungarians eat their fish before their meat courses. Now you are ready for the heavy hitters.

You cannot leave without tasting gulyas (pronounced GOO-yosh in Hungarian), the true national dish of this country. It’s nothing like what Americans think of as goulash: a broth, really, infused with paprika and not at all thick and stewy. This chef employs finely cubed beef and potatoes to add body, and simple diced carrots for peasant appeal. Eat some, and then say you’ve had real goulash.

Among the five main courses, my favorite has to be breast of chicken Budapest: boned chicken breasts smothered with stewed red and green peppers that have been quick-sauteed with Hungarian bacon. The chef says he likes the meat in our country, but he complained a bit about the flavor of our chickens. “In Hungary,” he said through a translator, “we feed our chickens naturally.”

The other four entrees are quite a bit more filling, but all delicious. Crepes Eszterhazy are stuffed with minced chicken and served in more of that sour cream paprika sauce. Another dish named after the aristocratic Eszterhazy family is beef tenderloin Eszterhazy, medallions of beef swimming in a Dijon mustard demi-glaze, with sour and sweet cream and julienned vegetables.

What they’re calling veal paprika with gnocchi here--cubed veal in a pink sauce ladled onto flour dumplings--is really paprikas with galuska . The most merciless dish of all, veal steak Hotel Korona, seems better suited for another era. It’s boned veal stuffed with goose liver, blanketed with a wonderful dill sauce and served with a side of zoldsegesretes, a kind of vegetable strudel. Sheer death, as Woody Allen said in a recent film.

Strudel ( retes in Hungarian) figures prominently in the desserts. The menu tells you “Magyar and Austrian historians do not agree as to who invented the strudel,” sort of implying that it was the Hungarians. No comment, except for the fact that these apple and sour cherry strudels are light and wonderful. Not so light are palacintas, thin pancakes with walnut, raisin, rum, lemon peel and chocolate sauce, or somlo, two kinds of sponge cake with custard, nuts, apricot jam and whipped cream, a kind of Hungarian trifle.

You know, maybe a few days of this is more than most people can handle.

A Taste of Hungary is being served from 5 to 10 p.m., Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Appetizers are $3.75 to $4.95. Entrees are $10.95 to $19.95. Desserts are $3.95 to $4.95. The buffet price is $24.95.

CALIFORNIA BISTRO

1550 S. Harbor Blvd., Anaheim.

(714) 776-5300.

Open daily, 7 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

All major cards accepted.