Restaurant fills bellies for free

Budapest – Hungarian families stricken by unemployment due to the Covid-19 crisis who have also fallen through the country’s fl imsy social security net say they have little option but to turn to a pop-up soup kitchen.

The help is a private initiative by Norbert Bango and his wife, Vivien, who run a Budapest restaurant and decided to repurpose its kitchen as a relief centre after it was shuttered last March during the first coronavirus lockdown.

Since then, at least once a week, the couple have been preparing and distributing hot meals, as well as bags of essentials like cooking oil, flour and fruit.

“We’re the only restaurant in central Budapest doing this,” Vivien, 35, said while ladling stew from a steaming vat into hundreds of plastic bowls of noodles.

“We gave up our Christmas break with our family as we couldn’t sleep knowing people would go hungry,” she said.

Located in Budapest’s nightlife district, the Kis Kulacs (Little Flask) hosted popular live music sessions after the couple bought it two years ago.

But since the coronavirus measures emptied the city of tourists and customers, it now plays host to a queue of people desperate for food, regularly stretching for hundreds of metres.

“When we started, so many families with children came that I said whatever happens I have to keep going to try to help them,” Norbert, 48, said.

Many in the queue said they had lost their jobs due to the pandemic.

“I’m one of 50 let go this year from my former workplace,” Cecilia Jakab, a 37-year-old office cleaner and single mother of three, said. “We can’t pay our bills any more but since Norbi and Vivi started this, at least my children can be fed.”

The virus caused a recession, which is estimated to have shrunk the economy by over 6% last year, and the loss of several hundred thousand jobs during the first lockdown in the northern spring.

However, many unemployed people are not registered and government data in November showed only a slight rise in unemployment to around 4.5%.

In addition, the EU member has one of the least generous social security nets in the bloc. –