Budapest -- Bob Cohen leads an audio culinary tour

 Me in Froelich's pastry shop in December.

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I've pointed out a lot of Bob Cohen's wonderful blog posts about food, travel and music and link to his blog, Dumneazu.

But now you can hear him -- Tablet Magazine's audio "Vox Tablet" runs a wonderful 10-minute visit with Bob to two of Budapest's most famous Jewish (or Jewish-style) eateries -- the tiny little Kadar lunchroom on Klauzal ter, and Froelich's kosher pastry shop on Dob utca.

Both are favorites with locals (and a five-minute walk from my apartment).

I vividly remember my first visit to Kadar, back in about 1990 or 1991. I was taken there by the  Peter Wirth, an architect who has carried out restoration work on several synagogues in Hungary and also produced a photographic book on Jewish cemeteries in northeast Hungary. (He won the Europa Nostra award for his restorations of the synagogues in Apostag, in the 1980s, and in Mad, in 2004.)

With Peter that first time, I remember I ordered the solet -- cholent -- with goose leg, a specialty. Kadar is not kosher and even serves sholet with pork. But for many local Jews it is a ritual to go there to eat solet on Saturday. One Saturday lunchtime my brother Sam and I shared a table with a man and his son eating solet -- and we then ran into him later at the Rabbinical Seminary synagogue, where he was the gabbai...