Two years ago in Edinburgh I had hoped to be joined by one of my nephews. (Well, technically he is a first cousin once-removed, but generationally I think of him as a nephew.) He couldn't make it. I was bummed and decided to fill the time with a culinary tour of the city. It was so great that I decided I should do it here in Budapest as well, specifically this tour.

The tour was scheduled for 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. I googled directions to the starting point, which looked to be about 20 minutes walk. Google suggested three paths, so I took the one that went right along the bank of the Danube. Beautiful. Gives me ideas for the next few days.

I arrived at the Várásczarnok (Central Market), our point of departure. I had arrived with 45 minutes to spare, a sensible precaution in a city new to me when I had no smartphone that could rectify possible misdirection. The Edinburgh tour did not include a market, so I figured the market was just an easy place to meet and that we wouldn't actually explore the market itself, so I wandered it in my free time, getting a good feel for the layout. It's a remarkable building and a remarkable internal space. Imagine the framework of the Eiffel Tower transformed to enclose a train station. Then instead of trains install food vendors. It produces the most incredible feeling. It was obvious that my camera couldn't capture the feel of it, so I'll see if I can't google up a picture that somehow helps. I noted the right aisle on the first floor was popular with elderly Hungarians, so obviously it had the best prices for fruits and vegetables. The first-floor middle aisle was obviously for tourists. The left aisle somewhat less pricey with similar goods. The second floor on one side had lots of souvenir clothing along with beautifully colored lacework that immediate made me think my mother would love them, although then I double-thought myself and decided that my mother's mother would have liked them even more. Not cheap, though, let me tell you. And I was also amused to spot Russian matryoshkas; talk about misplaced. I was half-tempted to buy one that had Elvis depicted on the outermost doll. The opposite side had a dozen eateries. Crossing the space were several aisles with Chinese-produced tourist glop.

Just before ten I proceeded to the main entrance and noted two women who had the feel of culinary tourists. The first was Lisa from Kansas City, MO, along with her colleague Catherine from Köln, Germany, both lovely and in their late 20s, perhaps early 30s, both working for Purina-Nestle. Our smiling faces attracted tour-guide George (really "Gergely", but the l is not pronounced). We were to be joined by five others, but those slackers failed to appear. We waited 15 minutes and proceeded without them.

We began the tour at the overlook on the second floor. It gave us a great feel for the place.

Then we proceeded to a corner bar, where we tried a shot of Unikum, kind of a Hungarian Jaegermeister, although the flavor was more like Cinzano. In a glorious act of sexism, George gave me the traditional Unikum, bitter and medicinal, which I actually liked, and gave the two girls the plum-based version, which is suitable for women. Doubtless my readers are mortified at his lack of political-correctness, but frankly Lisa and Catherine liked their plum stuff and hated my medicine. I liked both. In short, George's sexism paid off. More power to you, George! BTW, Lisa and Catherine were both in wonderful dresses that presented their Y-less selves beautifully to the world. My inner Patriarch approved their choices, and it was obvious that they reveled in my Y-some approval. Yes, this is the way the world should be. Alas, none of us had had breakfast, so the world also became a bit wobbly.

Our next stop in the market presented us with typical Hungarian langos in two versions, each about the size of a standard American apple pie. First, picture Indian fry bread. Cover one of them with butter and fresh garlic. Cover the other with sour cream and white cheese. Not bad at all, although frankly I'm just not much of a bread eater. At the table next to us, three American boys ordered a "Hungarian hot dog," a creation so massive they cut it into thirds and were satisfied.

Next we visited a charcutière, who presented us with seven types of HU sausage, the first of which was a spicy horse-sausage. ¡La muerte! To die for! The other seven were quite good as well, only one or two of them were spicy. This was good prep for eating horse meat in Bishkek.

From there we stopped at a corner store that sold, among other things, a confection called Trudi. Imagine something the size of a mozzarella stick, but instead of mozzarella it has a quark filling that has a flavor halfway between cottage cheese and marzipan. Then cover that finger in chocolate. Very tasty. The Russians actually make a lot of this stuff now as well.

To my shock, I had completely failed to notice that the market also had a basement where the vendors of fish, game and pickles reside. The Hungarians are insane for pickles, just as much as the Russians. We tried pickled cucumbers, cauliflower, melons, onions and cherry peppers. It all rocked. And these were all naturally fermented pickles, no acids or artificial ingredients added. I particularly liked the pickled cauliflower which retained a bit of the natural crunch of the raw vegetable.

At this stage I was sort of disappointed in the tour. I mean paying a hundred samolians to wander around the market and try food? I had already wandered around the market, and I could certainly have tried all these foods for less money. On the other hand, I wouldn't have know what to try, so I didn't whine.

Then, to my shock, we left the market. We headed northward to Rózsavölgyi Csokoládé, a local chocolatier that makes artisan chocolates. Let's be frank: the word 'artisan' is way too overused for over-priced mediocre comestibles in the US. Why the heck would I buy anything 'artisanal'? It's just conspicuous consumption and egotism. But these artisanal chocolates rocked. Locally produced. I tried a tarragon chocolate, completely unique in my experience, and a cardamum chocolate, which was wonderful. These are the type of chocolates where seriously only one or two small pieces are all you need because you have had a gustatory revelation, and it would simply be overkill to keep on trying.

By this time jet lag was affecting me. I was tired, wanted to sleep and my feet hurt. I could tell my emotional energy was gone, not to mention my blood sugar poorly affected by the presence of alcohol and the lack of real protein. But I was determined to press on.

At noon George got a phone call. Four of our wayward guests had made phone contact. They had failed to read page two of their receipts, and thus had not known where to meet us. (I had come within a hair's breadth of making the same error since the confirmation PDF they had sent seemed like a single pager but was actually two pages.) They agreed to meet us at our luncheon place. Turns out that they have been doing a marvelous month-long tour of Europe, hitting many spots that others skip, including Slovakia, Slovenia and Albania. Kudos to them, even if their conversation was tiresome.

Our lunch stop offered us:

• a standard pork sausage
• a liver sausage (a bit to mineral-y for me)
• a blood sausage (decent)
• baked goose
• red cabbage cole slaw with lots of garlic (standard stuff)
• a radish slaw seasoned with horseradish (good)
• a breaded chicken roulade, similar to chicken cordon bleu
• fried zucchini and fried potato balls
• a side of spiced mayonnaise, a side of chili sauce, and a side of spicy mustard

All in all, this is heavy eating that they usually reserve for winter.

Thence we passed by various cafe, learning in the process that previously in the city you could only call a place a cafe if it had a corner location and a ceiling of at least 4 meters. We reached a cake shop, which was beautifully decorate with beautiful wall art. We tried seven varieties of Hungarian cake, everything from dobos ("a Hungarian sponge cake layered with chocolate buttercream and topped with caramel", source) to Esterházy torte (buttercream spiced with cognac or vanilla, sandwiched between four to five layers of walnut macaroon dough, source) and custards and cheese cake. All very good, especially the Esterházy, which is saying something since I don't like walnuts. Our guide George showed himself particularly ept at carving each piece of cake into seven subunits so we could all taste each.

Here's a picture of the dobos torte:

And here's a picture of the Esterházy:

Now it was time to start wrapping up with a visit to Taste Hungary, a wine-tasting establishment in the basement of a marvelous old building. Here's a picture of the interior.

We were presented with platters of various cheeses and fruits plus bread and pumpkin seed oil. That's right: pumpkin seed oil. You dip the bread in it. Frankly, it tasted more like peanut butter than anything else to me, although there was also a hint of flavor that proved it was related to pollo en pipián. We tried a rosé (ho-hum), a red (good), and finally a Tokay. Tokay is a regional dessert wine produced with the noble rot. It's aroma in fact had something that smelled a bit moldy or fungal, but when it your palate, it was freakin' heaven. They said it paired well with the blue cheese, a substance I consider as vile as cilantro, but by heaven I was determined to try it. Wow. This blue cheese was good. And eating it paired with Tokay reinforced the moldy/fungal taste of both, but somehow it was really good. Whodathunkit?

By this time it was 3:00, an hour later than our scheduled quitting time. I headed homeward.

So here are some random thoughts.

• Our guide George had excellent English.
• He spoke English, Russian, Hungarian and Japanese, and he flirts with Chinese. I didn't trip him up on one single linguistic question.
• George was quite conversant in world politics, oenology in general and local food scene in particular.
• Katherine definitely understood politics, history and geography better than Lisa: it really shows you the difference between a European education and an American one.
• All in all, I'd say the tour was worth it. Not quite as neat as the Edinburgh tour, but still pretty good.

Whew, that's a chunk of writing. Time to call it quits and get to bed.