Budapest, Hungary (special) -- Two American Jews of Hungarian ancestry, have teamed up to restore Budapest's best-known restaurant, Gundel, to its former pre-World War II glory. Their investment is part sentiment, and part conviction that in the post-communist era, Budapest will become the "Hong Kong of Europe."

The pair are former U.S. Ambassador to Austria Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder  cosmetic fortune, and international restaurant consultant George Lang, owner of Cafe des Artistes in New York and author of the recently-published light-hearted autobiography, Nobody Knows the Truffles I've Seen.

Lauder is widely known in the Jewish community as the chairman of the Jewish National Fund. He also oversees the Lauder Family Foundation which has helped re-ignite Jewish life throughout central and Eastern Europe by funding such Jewish youth oriented institutions as schools and camps. By coincidence, Lang--who spends most of his time in New York--was at Gundel the evening that we had a family dinner in honor of my wife Nancy's 50th birthday. Lang agreed to be interviewed a few days later at the large restaurant, which adjoins the Budapest Zoo and is close to Heroes Square on the Pest side of the DanubeRiver. Knowing from his autobiography that the nazis had interred him during the Holocaust, I asked Lang if it had been painful to return to the land where 600,000 Jews were murdered, another 100,000 were displaced, and where only an estimated 100,000 still live today.

George Lang at Gundel

Long before there were nazis, he replied, Hungary flourished as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. "This was one of the few periods of history where money, power and culture were in the same hands--that is of the middle and mostly upper class--and they built this city from 1820 to 1920. They were the people who protected, created and courted the fine art of living, which means, of course, dining." 

Gundel, named for the restaurant's owners in its time of glory, preceded the Holocaust, as well as Hungary's 50 year subjugation under communism, Lang pointed out.

Now, in post-nazi, post-communist, democratic Hungary, there is the opportunity of "waking up Sleeping Beauty, and making sure that when she wakes up, she will find it agreeable," Lang said. "To be able to do this, you sort of cast aside everything and just do it, and rationalize some of the things away which maybe rationally you should not."

Further, Lang asked rhetorically, does not the Bible teach that the sins of the parents should not be visited upon the children and grandchildren?

In the process of building the new Gundel empire--which operates not only a restaurant, but its own winery in Hungary's famed Tokaj (pronounced Toke-eye) region--there were some painful moments, Lang conceded.

For example, when he was looking to find a venue for the winery, he travelled northeast from Budapest to a village called Mad (pronounced Mahd). "We were at one of the hillsides and at a distance I saw an exquisite chapel-size, Habsburg yellow-and-white building, and I was with the mayor and a couple of other prominent people from the village, and I asked what was that...

"One of them said, 'That was the Jewish synagogue. If you want to buy it; it is available. It is open.' I said, 'Don't you have Jews here?' knowing full well that much like in Spain, where the English went and made Madera into an international commodity, the same thing had happened to Tokaj when the Jewish merchants, people who understood international marketing, went there and made it famous. Before the Jews, nobody had ever heard of it.

"One of them replied to me, 'They all left,' to which his son replied, 'well we are better off without them.'"

Lang said when he returned to the United States he repeated this story to Elie Wiesel, telling the Nobel Prize winner that he thought it "amazing that this young man never met a Jew, and he is already an anti-Semite."

Wiesel, "probably the only time ever in our friendship, looked at me and said, 'George, even you don't understand that anti-Semitism has no logical reason' and then I was ashamed of myself," Lang said.

The restaurateur subsequently found another property for a winery in the same town, deciding against using the old synagogue: "I could have made wine there, but I felt it would be a desecration, especially since my maternal grandfather was a rabbi, a brilliant and wise, wonderful human being," Lang said. 

(A postscript: Lang found a Neil Folberg photograph of the same synagogue on display in the travelling exhibit And I Shall Dwell Among Them: Historic Synagogues of the World at the Spertus Museum of Chicago. The exhibit next goes to Maryland.)

As an historian of restaurants (he wrote the 'restaurant' entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica) and an inveterate researcher, Lang set out to recreate the dishes from Gundel's golden era, while at the same time offering lighter cuisine appealing to more modern tastes. Even historic restaurants should not become prisoners of the past, Lang said.

In a memo to his staff after the 1990 purchase of Gundel, Lang discussed the proper preparation of roasted goose liver, which is a staple of Hungarian cuisine:

"If I am not mistaken," he wrote, "there are three ways of roasting goose liver in Hungary. The first is the home-style where the housewife soaks it in milk for a while. Dries it, salts it, then browns it in its own fat. As a next step they add a little bit of water plus finely chopped onion and cook it under cover for a while; then remove the cover so that the liquid will evaporate and the liver browns. When they remove the liver from the fat they add a bit of paprika into the hot fat, stir it and strain it on top of the liver. We should also try to add salt at the end--perhaps it toughens the liver if it is added in the beginning.

"The method of the Jewish kitchen is almost the same but it is soaked in water instead of milk and they add garlic as well as the onion. The garlic is smashed into a puree with coarse salt, several  small incisions are made in the liver and the garlic paste is spread into the cuts.

"The third version is of course the restaurant method when they kill the liver a second time by overcooking it -- which is so prevalent in the restaurants of Budapest today. 

"I would like very much to try...the first and the second method..."

Lang--who built his reputation as a restaurateur at New York's Waldorf Astoria and at the Four Seasons--has consulted in the creation of 300 other restaurants around the world yet, even so, he couldn't say "what percentage is the visual aspect, the cuisine, the service. ...A place like this which is really like Delmonico's was in the last century in New York, like Hotel de Paris was in France the last century, which is really the center of society, way beyond a restaurant, where everything happens."

With guidance from Lauder, who is a patron of the arts, paintings were located representing the history of Hungarian art over the last 100 years, coinciding with Gundel's history. Artists represented include Mihaly Munkacsy, Jozsef Rippl-Ronai, Dezso Orban, Aladar Korosfoi-Kriesch, Csaba Vilmost Perlrott; Rezso Burghardt, Odon Marrfy; Lajos Gulacsy, Geza Bornemisza; Frigyes Frank; Robert Bereny; Lajos Mark and Vilmos Aba Novak.

A logo for Gundel, evocative of a New Yorker magazine cover, was executed by artist Milton Glaser. The poster featured a stylized Gundel signature suggesting a chair in which a sophisticated lady sits as she sips a glass of champagne. For months before Gundel's reopening, during its extensive renovation, the poster was exhibited not only in Budapest but in such nearby central European capitals as Vienna and Prague. The shape of the signature, meanwhile, was used as an accent in the restaurant's interior design.

For the renovation, Lang said, "we used all the Hungarian craftsmen and we put them into business again. Certain things like glass etching had been forgotten during the 50 years during the night of communism. The culinary art and craft were renewed; the pride in their workmanship; the fact that they get what they put in...the fact that they are able to go to the very top, as long as they put in what they have to.

"Considering all this and a few other things, (Hungarian) President (Arpad) Goncz said that Gundel's restoration is the clearest symbol of Hungary's resurrection."

Although Hungary is now a democracy, going from a planned economy to a market-driven economy has not been without bumps. Average wages in Hungary are quite low. How, I asked, can the average Hungarian wage earner ever afford to go to Gundel? 

Dr. Gabor Buday, managing director of Gundel and its related enterprises, said he began his career in the restaurant business 34 years ago as an apprentice. "At that time," he related, "the country was poor but everyone was at the same level. But I remember that on weekends and at nights, the restaurant was packed with Hungarians--Hungarian families, private people. They came for private occasions. I remember that the whole garden was covered with tables and it was very interesting, on Saturday mornings, from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., there were about 60 waiters who would be outside waiting for a job."

Buday said it is true that "the Hungarian middle class and urban citizens are very poor now, but we are confident that within a couple of years, they will get strong financially and they will be able to afford it." Even so, in the interim, "we have many Hungarian guests: businessmen who can afford it; people with family memories--who met their spouse here, or had their marriages here.

"I have to tell you that we are encouraging them with different actions, like the Sunday brunch where they can come for a very moderate price and have the Gundel feeling, and when the time comes that they can afford it, it will be very high on their priorities to come."

Partially to insure that his restaurants were not thought of simply as "expensive places for rich foreigners," Lang decided to open a small, relatively inexpensive restaurant on an adjoining property, where simple home-style Hungarian cooking would be offered at relatively inexpensive prices. This was named Bagolyvar, meaning "The Owl's Castle." As a further innovation, Lang decreed that the restaurant should be run and staffed entirely by women-- the manager, chefs, cooks, and waiters. 

"The walls have etchings, drawings and engravings of women at work and at play," Lang said. Why this emphasis on feminism? "In Central and Eastern Europe, if I can approximate a wife's and mother's flavors, I am in a winning position, and the service would be also much warmer, much more charming," Lang said. "I must also confess it was because it had tremendous public relations value."

Although Lauder and Lang found that Gundel and the associated property could be purchased, a major problem was from whom? It was not at all clear who owned the restaurant, which first was constructed in 1894. Not only did the City of Budapest own a portion of the restaurant and its spacious grounds; claims also were advanced by the district within the city (which has separate legal status), the zoo and the Gundel family, which saw it nationalized under communism.

Ultimately Lauder and Lang wrote checks to almost everyone, but none more memorable than those issued to various Gundel family members who after long negotiations had thought to hold out even longer for a better price. 

Noting that when Gundel had taken over the lease of a predecessor restaurant called Wampetich, the Gundel restaurant's founder had displayed a sign that said,"Gundel, formerly Wampetich" Lang suggested that if negotiations could not be successfully concluded, he would have no choice but to display a similar sign, which would say "Wampetich, formerly Gundel." 

According to Lang's version. The descendants paled and at last acquiesced to their payments.

* * *

Another coincidence: Nancy and I stayed for two weeks at the Hotel Gellert on the Buda side of the Danube, not knowing that back in the 1920s, Gundel operated all the restaurants in the hotel,

We were aware, however, that while the hotel is charming, and its thermal pools and baths world-famous, its food service is merely adequate. 

Buday told me that Gundel has offered to take over the venerable hotel's food service, but added that if there is real interest the negotiations will be at least as difficult as those in acquiring Gundel. The Gellert sits in another district of Budapest, which--like the city--claims an ownership interest in the property.

Our room opened to a veranda overlooking the river, and we could watch with fascination as people continuously embarked and disembarked from the yellow trams that continuously crossed one of nine bridges that link Buda and Pest. 

Whenever we desired, we could don hotel-supplied bathrobes over our swim suits and walk down a hall to an attended birdcage elevator, which dropped us to the swimming pool and baths level. 

The outdoor swimming pool--owned by the municipality--features an artificially generated wave every hour. This event never fails to empty the lounge chairs all around, resulting in strangers laughing and dancing practically arm in arm as they attempt to dive under, over, or tread the fast-moving current which gathers strength toward the shallow end.

Indoors, there are hot and cold mineral baths, which are coeducational, as well as separate baths for men and women where swim suits are optional and where one may purchase a relaxing massage. Medicinal treatments are offered in a separate area near the pool. The baths and pool complex, set among high stone walls consonant with the hills of Buda, is a popular destination for visitors and Budapest residents alike.

The Gellert was named after Bishop Saint Gellert, who arrived in Hungary as a priest in the 11th century and was elevated to bishop when King Stephen called on him for help in his campaign to convert his Magyar tribesmen to Christianity. Gellert outlived the king, and in a subsequent pagan revolt against Christianity he was stabbed to death after crossing the Danube in a ferry from Pest. Then by handcart his attackers took him to the top of what is now called Gellert Hill and cast his body down. He was canonized in 1083, the same year as King Stephen.

The four-story hotel and public baths were opened in 1918, and in subsequent years, they attracted such luminaries as Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, who spent her honeymoon there. But the complex fell on hard times in the late 1930s and early 1940s, when the hotel was patronized by the nazi German elite, including the SS General Kaltenbrunner. 

Perhaps that was one reason the Allies chose to bomb the hotel and the nearby Franz Joseph Bridge in January of 1945, just three months before the end of World War II. The hotel did not reopen until one year later approximately the same time that the Franz Joseph Bridge was rebuilt and renamed as the Szabadsag (Liberty) Bridge.

A regular at the Gellert in the post-war period was violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who performed frequently in Hungary. Bruno Kreisky, a Jew who would become chancellor of neighboring Austria, also was a guest, as were such political figures as Richard Nixon (1963, following his defeat in the California governor's race); the King of Nepal, the Shah of Iran, and UN Secretary General Perez de Cuellar.

In a souvenir book to commemorate Gundel's 100th anniversary in 1994, Lang included a story about one of Gundel's legendary managers, Jozsef Marchal Jr., a former chef to Napoleon III who brought many secrets of French haute cuisine back to Hungary with him and whose responsibility included operating the Gellert Hotel restaurants.

Approximately in the 1920s, a rabbi from the town of Olaszliszka stayed at the Hotel Gellert, and although he only ate in nearby kosher restaurants, he one day perused the Gellert menu and found an entree named "meat soup with matzo dumplings." 

The rabbi, according to the story, complained that matzo was a misspelling for unleavened bread. "The waiter called the manager--and to the rabbi's utter surprise Jozsef Marchal proved to him in Hebrew that the word was spelled correctly." The Olaszliszka rabbi "recovered from his initial shock only when he learned that the person imparting this information to Marchal was another chief rabbi."

In fact, the source was Rabbi Simon Hevesi, who once had been a classmate of Marchal's in grammar school, apparently failing to live up as a schoolboy to the potential he later exhibited. 

According to the story, "Hevesi's parents decided to employ Marchal as tutor for their son. The boys' cooperation brought a rather unexpected result: not only did Hevesi bring home good marks at the end of the school year, but by that time Marchal had learned to speak Hebrew."

Further, "Marchal, a devout Catholic, always recited the Jewish Kaddish at his parents' grave because he thought it was the most beautiful of all funeral prayers."