In the summer of 2009, I ended up in Budapest with a man whose surname was Farmer. We’d been in Amsterdam, Berlin and Prague, drinking absinthe and sleeping on trains, and we found nourishment in Hungary by way of €5 goulash and €1 beers. Before Farmer dashed off to Madrid and I booked a cheap flight home, I went to the now-famous Szimpla Kert, one of Budapest’s original “ruin bars” hidden in abandoned ex-Soviet buildings. I found it to be a mystical place, cavernous and neon-lit, with a canopy of plants hanging from the ceiling among an endless parade of bric-a-brac adorning steel beams and dusty brickwork. There were rooms with comfy sofas and shisha pipes, a lively crowd, bashed up cars below disco balls. A jazz band played in front of squeaky food carts.
Shoreditch Wine House isn’t quite the same but it’s as close as you can get in London. It helps that the sommelier is Hungarian, with his circular spectacles and soft demeanour. You enter through a little alley in Shoreditch to find a quite plush-looking wine shop, but carry on into a space behind to find plants and candles, low sofas and — if you’re lucky — a dog with an unimaginably long nose who potters about on the green floor, her shaggy fur illuminated by dim red lighting.
