Eight Budapest Dessert Spots, and the One You Can't Visit on a Sunday

Budapest’s traditional desserts live in eight addresses, and seven of them open every day of the week. The eighth, Auguszt Cukrászda, closes Sunday and Monday, which is how visitors end up outside a locked 1870 confectionery on the one free afternoon they had.

Here is what each one is for, what it costs, and when you can actually get in.

One Hungarian classic is missing from the list on purpose. Rétes is not a cukrászda cake and you will not find a decent one on any of these menus, because it is sold by the piece at dedicated strudel counters instead.

The eight, at a glance

Venue	District	Order this	Price	Hours
Gettó Gulyás	VII	Túrógombóc with cinnamon sour cream	2,590 Ft (about EUR 7)	Daily 12:00-23:00
Gundel	XIV	Somlói galuska	3,325 Ft (about EUR 9)	Daily 11:30-22:00, kitchen closes 21:00
Arán Bakery	VII	Flódni	At the counter	Mon-Fri 8:00-18:30, Sat 8:00-17:30, Sun 8:00-15:00
Café Gerbeaud	V	Dobos torta	2,190 Ft (about EUR 6)	Mon-Thu and Sun 9:00-20:00, Fri-Sat 9:00-21:00
Málna The Pastry Shop	V	Eszterházy	At the counter	Daily from 10:00
Central Grand Café	V	Rákóczi túrós	2,890 Ft (about EUR 8)	Mon-Tue and Sun 9:00-22:00, Wed-Sat 9:00-00:00
Szamos Marcipán	V	Marzipan, then the museum	At the counter	Daily 10:00-19:00 (Párizsi utca 3)
Auguszt Cukrászda	II and V	Esterházy torta	1,690-1,790 Ft (about EUR 4.50-5)	Tue-Sat, closed Sun-Mon

Prices are in HUF, which is what you pay at the counter. Converted at 1 EUR = 364 HUF, the ECB rate on 31 July 2026. Rates move, so treat the converted figures as indicative.

Gettó Gulyás: túrógombóc, and a room that fills

Túrógombóc is the dessert most Hungarians would name if you asked them what their grandmother made. Soft túró, semolina and egg, rolled, simmered, then rolled again in buttered breadcrumbs and buried under sour cream. Gettó Gulyás serves its version with cinnamon sour cream, at 2,590 Ft, and it is the reason a lot of people finish a stew here rather than somewhere cheaper.

The restaurant sits at Wesselényi utca 18, deep in the Jewish Quarter, and opens daily from noon to 11pm. The dining room is not large. Book a table rather than turning up hopeful, and treat dessert as a second act rather than the reason for the trip: this is a pörkölt and paprikás kitchen that happens to make an excellent dumpling.

Gundel: the house that somlói galuska came from

Somlói galuska was worked out in the late 1950s by Károly Gollerits, Gundel’s head waiter, together with pastry chef József Béla Szőcs, and named after Somlyó Hill in Fót where Szőcs lived. The 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels turned it into a national symbol. Sponge, chocolate, walnut, rum-soaked raisin and whipped cream, layered rather than heaped, and Gundel still serves it at 3,325 Ft.

That price is a restaurant dessert, not a counter slice, and it comes attached to a dining room by Heroes’ Square with a lunch card from 11:30 and a dinner card from 18:00. The kitchen closes at 21:00 even though the room runs to 22:00, so a late somlói is not a plan. Book online; the garden opens in summer when the weather cooperates.

Arán Bakery: flódni built on Szatmár plum jam

Flódni is the Hungarian Jewish layer cake: poppy seed, apple, plum jam, walnut, stacked and pressed into something denser than it looks. Arán makes its version with real Szatmár homemade jam, all plum, and that single ingredient is what separates a good flódni from a sweet one.

Kinga and Attila Pécsi opened the first Arán in 2019 on the corner of Wesselényi and Nagy Diófa, after ten years in Ireland where Kinga learned to bake. The name is Old Irish for bread, and the sourdough starter is the house’s real signature. A second shop followed in Buda in June 2021, and we have a full write-up of the Móricz Zsigmond körtér branch if you are on that side of the river. Both open every day, but not on the same clock. The Pest shop, the one you want for flódni, runs 8:00 to 18:30 Monday to Friday, 8:00 to 17:30 on Saturday and 8:00 to 15:00 on Sunday. Buda opens half an hour earlier and shuts at 15:00 on both weekend days. On a weekday the Wesselényi utca counter is still there at six; it is Sunday that turns flódni into a morning errand.

Café Gerbeaud: a very good Dobos it did not invent

The Dobos torta was József C. Dobos’s, presented at the 1885 National Exhibition in Budapest and given to the confectioners’ guild in 1906. Five thin sponge layers, chocolate buttercream between them, a sheet of hard caramel on top, and buttercream itself was the novelty at the time. Gerbeaud sells one for 2,190 Ft on its webshop.

Gerbeaud’s own history is separate and older. Henrik Kugler founded the shop on Vörösmarty tér in 1858; Émile Gerbeaud came from Paris in 1884, bought the business piece by piece and kept Kugler’s name over the door. The 1910 refit is what you are sitting in now: marble, exotic woods and bronze, rococo-style ceiling stucco, chandeliers, furniture brought back from the Paris World Fair.

The café takes no reservations and runs first come, first served, 9:00 to 20:00 Monday to Thursday and Sunday, an hour later on Friday and Saturday. On a summer afternoon on Vörösmarty tér that means a queue, and it means paying square rent on every slice. If you want to know exactly how much that costs, we put a bill on the table, and we also ranked the city’s Dobos slices against each other.

Málna The Pastry Shop: new address, same Eszterházy

The Eszterházy torte is almond meringue and vanilla buttercream under a fondant glaze, finished with the chocolate web pattern that makes it identifiable across a display case. Some versions swap walnut for almond. Málna’s is the one to compare everything else against.

Zoltán Kolonics ran the pastry kitchen at Gerbeaud before opening Málna with Ágnes Varga, a former ballet dancer who designs the shapes, and the Dining Guide named them Pastry Shop of the Year in 2022, 2023 and 2024. If you have an older guide telling you to go to Óbuda, throw it away: the Bécsi út shop closed on 7 September 2025, and Málna reopened on 28 October 2025 at Hercegprímás utca 17, behind St Stephen’s Basilica, across three floors with a new co-owner, table service and reservations. It opens every day from 10:00.

Central Grand Café: three classics on one menu

If you only have one sitting and want to taste the canon side by side, this is the efficient answer. The café at Károlyi utca 9 opened in 1887, survived a long closure, and now runs as Central Grand Café with the classics still on the card.

Dessert	Price	About (EUR)
Dobos torta	2,790 Ft	~7.50
Eszterházy torta	2,790 Ft	~7.50
Rákóczi túrós	2,890 Ft	~8

Rákóczi túrós is the one to order here, because it is the one you will not find at every counter in town: shortcrust base, sweetened túró, apricot jam, and a meringue top baked until it cracks. It is a slab, not a slice, and it is closer to a pudding than a cake.

Hours are generous by Budapest standards. Sunday to Tuesday 9:00 to 22:00, Wednesday to Saturday 9:00 to midnight, which makes it the only place on this list where dessert at 23:00 is a realistic idea. Compare it against the rest of the city’s coffee house scene before you commit an afternoon.

Szamos Marcipán: almond paste, and the museum above the café

Marzipan in Hungary is a Szamos business. The sculpting is the draw, fruit and figures and a miniature Parliament, and the company keeps a 78 kg marzipan piece that holds the size record.

Two addresses matter. The central pastry counter is the Marcipán Cukrászda at Párizsi utca 3, open daily 10:00 to 19:00, a two-minute walk off Váci utca. The mall branch is the Árkád Cukrászda at Örs vezér tere 25, open 10:00 to 20:00 Monday to Saturday and 10:00 to 19:00 on Sunday, which is where locals actually buy it.

The Szamos Chocolate Museum is a third address, and the one people get wrong: Kossuth Lajos tér 10, upper floor of the Szamos café beside Parliament, open daily 10:00 to 18:00, with guided tours and tastings. We cover what a chocolate museum visit actually involves separately.

Auguszt Cukrászda: the one that closes Sunday and Monday

Auguszt is the cheapest good cake on this list and the hardest to schedule. Slices run 1,690 to 1,790 Ft, roughly half what the square-facing cafés charge for the same classics, and the Esterházy torte is the order.

Elek Auguszt opened the first shop in Tabán in 1870. When he died in 1881 his widow Erzsébet kept it running; their son József E. Auguszt joined in 1895 and moved the business to Krisztinaváros by 1908, where it picked up the nickname “the Gerbeaud of Buda”. The state seized it in 1951 and pushed the family to the countryside. They came back in 1957 and opened on Fény utca, which is still the flagship.

Four shops trade today, and the two central ones both close Sunday and Monday:

Shop	District	Address	Hours
Fény utcai Auguszt	II	Fény utca 8	Tue-Sat 8:30-18:00, closed Sun-Mon
Auguszt Belváros	V	Kossuth Lajos utca 14-16	Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, closed Sun-Mon
Geraldine, Auguszt Múzeumkert	VIII	Múzeum körút 14-16	Tue-Sun 10:00-19:00, closed Mon
Farkasréti Auguszt Pavilon	XI	Sasadi út 190	Daily 10:00-19:00

Shop hours checked at auguszt.hu on 4 August 2026.

If your only free day is a Sunday, Geraldine in the National Museum garden is the family’s Sunday answer, and the Farkasrét pavilon opens all week if you are out that way.

What the same cake costs across town

The gap is not subtle. One Dobos torta, four ways to buy it:

Venue	Dobos slice	About (EUR)	What you are also paying for
Auguszt Cukrászda	1,790 Ft	~5	Nothing. A neighborhood counter in Buda
Café Gerbeaud (webshop)	2,190 Ft	~6	Takeaway from Vörösmarty tér
Central Grand Café	2,790 Ft	~7.50	Table service, an 1887 room, and hours that run to midnight
Café Gerbeaud (dine-in)	Dearest of the four, plus 15% service		A chair on Vörösmarty tér, and a service charge that is not optional

Sit down at Gerbeaud and the same slice costs more again, with the service charge on top. Same cake, same city, a thousand forints between the cheapest counter and a table at Central before Gerbeaud’s room is even in the running. The setting is the product at the top end, and that is a fair trade if you want the room. It is not a fair trade if you wanted cake.

The short version

Go to Auguszt for the best value and plan it for a weekday. Go to Gettó Gulyás for túrógombóc and book the table. Go to Gerbeaud once, for the room, knowing the price. Send anyone chasing flódni to Arán, and to Arán before 15:00 if the day is a Sunday, and anyone chasing Eszterházy to Málna behind the Basilica.

And if a guide tells you Málna is in Óbuda or that Gerbeaud invented the Dobos torta, check the date on it.

More sweet stops in Budapest

• Geraldine for Auguszt cake in the National Museum garden, open Sundays
• The Dobos torta ranking with prices from every counter worth the walk
• Café Gerbeaud, itemized if you want to know what the bill actually comes to
• Kürtőskalács for the chimney cake worth eating and the ones to skip
• Budapest’s cafés when the coffee matters as much as the cake