Spiler is one of those places that reminds us what fantastic things are happening in the former Eastern Bloc countries of Europe, and reinvigorates even the most dormant travel bug. Downtown Budapest is where the action is at in this case – a microbrewery bistropub (that’s last year’s gastropub, keep up) with so much going for it, that it might justify a budget airline flight on its own merits alone.
Even if your Hungarian isn’t what it was, the storylines of the cartoon frames above the bar should be easy enough to follow – people are getting punched in the face a lot in a kitschy sock-pow-biff kind of way – lit by extravagant carnivalesque bulb installations (Studio Bertjan Pot’s Stairway to Heaven, that we last featured in Dutch café Grandcafé Wennekerpand, making a welcome appearance). Nearer eye level, old wooden and colourful plastic crates have been re-employed to great effect.
Although the interior of the listed building is fun, owner and designer Roy Zsidai takes the food side of the operation seriously, and his family’s 30 years in the food industry is evident in the menu which has earned Spiler an impressive rep in a short space of time. Taxi to Stansted…
