Kérek Egy Feketét / Coffee Please

Budapest's first café opened in 1927, and these new institutions started competing with coffee houses before and during World War Two. From the 1950s on, once the new political system had removed their great predecessors from the map, cafés came to predominate, and branched out in terms of variety too, as the photos in this book illustrate. From intimate corners to large, all-singing all-dancing establishments, cheap imitation leather chairs to elegant wooden furniture, déclassé countesses to socialist brigades- in other words, everything we knew and loved about the café, its coffee aroma and cigarette smoke, from the memories of youth, and even a little bit more: our lives, our history.<br />- Noémi Saly, Budapest historian