Sometimes you just don’t know who to trust when it comes to drinking establishments in Europe. You can read all the reviews you want on Trip Advisor and still have no idea what to expect. One of our main aims here is to give you the no bullshit rundown on not only our favorite places to enjoy a cocktail or two but to provide some background and context to what’s out there on the web.
Case in point: Bar Domby in Budapest. If you google “best bars in Budapest” you will see a top result from worldsbestbars.com and from there you are led on a totally misguided rundown on the best bars in the Paris of the East. If you’ve ever actually lived in Budapest you will immediately see through the advertising exchange between the site and the bar management because most all the bars on the list are overpriced and boring with no personality or scene to speak of. In fact, there are more than a few listed that have since been closed or are under new ownership. No respectable local would show their face at one of these joints. But I digress…
Back to our example…Bar Domby is now called “The Bar.” Which could be an improvement already, but I doubt it. It’s definitely amongst the gangster-owned establishments where they would prefer you to not come in at all much less to order one of their overpriced cocktails. Forget chatting up your friendly bartender here. Worldsbestbars says it “has a New York feel” and although “gaudy…is stylishly carried off”and further, “the crowd is chic but not pretentious and the music fits the bill…”
First of all who wants a New York feel in Budapest? Second the décor is definitely gaudy, trying too hard to be something (a front for organized crime maybe) and is not inviting, lastly on this note, the crowd is not chic because there is no crowd to speak of as it’s usually occupied by a few men looking sinister, and on the nights when there are people populating the uncomfortable bar chairs, you just know that “to be pretentious” is exactly what drew them there.
Be careful with top results in your quick-time google search, they are often misleading or are driven by something other than good information. Budapest is a city filled with some of the most amazing and unique bars in all of Europe and we’d feel really bad if you wasted your time and money in one of these gilded turds.
Not To Shrink The Earth 