HUNGRY FOR HUNGARIAN

What better on a cold winter night than a hot, hearty dinner! With that in mind, one frosty night in January after Jeremy's touch football game, we decided to sample the culinary treasures of his ancestors and head for Hungarian food.   Years ago, there would have been dozens of restaurants to choose from however today there are just a handful of true Hungarian restaurants in the NYC area.  According to my good Hungarian friend, Katalin, the best of them all is Andre's Cafe.

Jeremy is 1/4 Hungarian  His grandfather's family all came over from Hungary at the turn of the century.  So needless to say, we felt a certain affinity for the cuisine and the restaurant.  Decorated simply with a few seats the restaurant lacks charm but makes up for it in flavor.  

We took the advise from Katalin on what to order:  cabbage strudel, layered potatoes, stuffed cabbage and of course, sweet strudels for dessert.

JEREMY
The restaurant looked like the Motherland -- it had a lot of Hungarian souvenirs on the wall.  The place was definitely rustic but the food was good.  We started with a cabbage strudel.  It was a savory strudel but a little sweet.  The dough was very flaky.  After the strudel, we ordered three main courses.  The Layered Potatoes, Rakott Krumpli, filled with potatoes, eggs and sausage tasted more like a hot potato salad.   It was a little bland.  I personally didn't like the Stuffed Cabbage but we also ordered Chicken Paparikash which came with nokedli (spaetzle).  I really liked this dish.  It had a good sauce and went well with the nokedli.  Even though we ordered a ton of food, we left half of it over so we could have room for dessert.

MARCI

The Cabbage Strudel was indeed a highlight of the meal and tasted even better with sour cream. The Layered Potatoes tasted like the inside of an omelette -- it needed salt.  I'm not a fan of pork but the Stuffed Cabbage was very tasty -- not too tomatoey and not too heavy.  The Chicken Paprikash was a little dry to me but as you can see from above Jeremy seemed to really like it.  We needed to digest our food a little bit before dessert so we picked out some tasty treats from the bakery and headed home.

JEREMY

We brought home Apple, Poppy and Cheese Strudels plus a slice of Dobos Torte, a chocolate layer cake with caramel.  The apple was the best of the strudels but my favorite dessert was the Dobos Torte.  It was a delicious chocolate cake with a hard crust of caramel on top.

I definitely would go back to Andre's Cafe, mostly because it's near my school. 

MARCI

The Apple Strudel was definitely a winner.  The dough was very flaky, the apples were not too soft or too sweet.  The Cheese and Poppy Strudels were also tasty but you could really only have a spoonful at a time.  The Dobos Torte was a little too sweet for me.  Hungarian food is a little too heavy for me but I wouldn't mind heading to Andre's Cafe for a slice of strudel and coffee after a PTA meeting!

ANDRE'S CAFE
1631 Second Avenue
New York, NY  10028
www.andrescafeny.com

a diagonal thumbs up, according to Jeremy, is a 2.75 out of 4