With the Corvin shopping center and the entire Corvin project in the eight district of Budapest this area has been changed totally. Where there were just ruined buildings some years ago we can now find brand new buildings, a shopping mall and some nice restaurants and bars. By a coincidence I dropped by Vinowonka – Chocolate and Wine Bar last Saturday and here are my thoughts!
One should of course do some research before writing an article about a place. Therefore I visited the homepage of Vinowonka to see what they write of themselves. The first sentences I meet are the following: “VinoWonka opened at the end of May 2011. It is in the 9th district of Budapest, just off the famous Ráday restaurant street. ” I am not so familiar with the history of VinoWonka, but the details dealing with the location of the place are all quite wrong. First of all the place is not in the ninth district of Budapest, but in the eigth. Secondly this is quite far from the famous Ráday street. Not too far, but on foot you should at least prepare to walk for 5-10 minutes to get to VinoWonka. These are of course just small details, but thought I should mention them.
Ps: I just realized that the information mentioned earlier about the location of Vinowonka on the webpage is only wrong in the English version. The Hungarian version is up to date and contains correct information.
I sat down with a good friend of mine to talk about life, blogging, Budapest, politics and whatsoever and we ordered wine, cocoa, a lemonade and some cinnamon rolls. We came “quite early” so as we arrived they were currently writing the information about the wines available to the blackboard (there is no menu as the wines available keep changing). The waitress came over and helped us quickly and we got what we asked for. The service was good and they were helpful and smiling and did their best to give us whatever we requested. We did of course not taste to much, but our impression was that the quality of the wines was very good. The price level is as it normally is on wine bars… meaning that you have to pay between 250-600 HUF per dl of wine. If you like what you taste you can of course buy an entire bottle with you home afterwards!
If you live in a hotel nearby you could also consider have your breakfast in Vinowonka. They have different things to offer and the prices are average. For those living in the central parts of Budapest this is probably not a place to visit, but for those somehow walking by this area or if you are living in Bo18 Superior Hotel, Fraser Residence, Corvin Hotel, Hotel City Inn, Hotel Sissi or similar hotels in this area, then you should for sure consider to drop by Vinowonka to taste some nice Hungarian wine and eat some chocolate.
I should probably mention that the cinnamon rolls, the cocoa and the lemonade all tasted great, so keep up the good work making the eight district of Budapest a great place to be!
PS: the quality of the pictures are really bad. I did not really plan to visit a place I had never been before (and thus write an article about it), so all pictures where made with the rather poor camera on my mobile phone.
BorBar or Vinowonka as seen from the outside
I used to go to their place off of Raday, I think it was Erkel. When I went the last time, the place was empty. It is good to know they moved and did not go out of business totally.