Mélypont Presszó

Courtesy of Emil Chalhoub Photos

Welcome back, Kind Reader, to the most amateurish coffee house review blog you will find on such short notice. This monkey has been hard at work banging away at his typewriter and churning out pseudo-Shakespeare for your reading displeasure, and I am proud to say that today's post is a shining second log in my journal of the slow, decaying orbit of a talentless hack's ineffectual dance around terminal failure. This week, we went to a very exciting place, and we're very excited to tell you about it. Exciting, isn't it?

We're kind of veering off distinguished coffee house territory again, without ever really starting there to begin with, as the genre of presszó is the most plebeian form of coffee house, and often coffee-related in name only. However, the place I'm covering today still serves coffee, so I have some minimal justification for my suspiciously alcohol-oriented review schedule. Yay!

Mélypont Presszó is situated in a cellar along a side street between Astoria and Kálvin. Keep your eyes open, because we managed to walk past it twice before having to look up the exact number it was to be found under, and even then it took us a while to start looking on the right side of the street. Either we represent the unobservant drone caste, destined to fill out our years on this plane completely oblivious to everything outside the echoing halls of our own tortured minds, or Mélypont is a bit out of the way. Go see and decide for yourself which one the case may be.

Grandma's old TV

Whether it is out of the way by design or through our own lack of awareness, though, its seclusion is not unwelcome, and in fact complements the atmosphere quite naturally. Already on the stairs leading down to the cellar, a distinct odor permeates everything--a smell of rotten youth laid to rest in the fertile soil of childhood memory and gnawed bare by the maggots of time. And as the first wave of nostalgia crashes on the cliffs of olfaction, we open the cellar door to enter into a world that only ever existed in past tense. Mismatched furniture several decades past its best before greets us in mellow silence: a couple tattered armchairs in one corner, a 90's hospital waiting room bench around the other, and a glass cabinet full of assorted kitsch by the opposite wall, a glowing molded plastic owl its centerpiece.

But mixed metaphors aside, it really is as if someone's grandmother had died and left her place to the entire city--no one dares get rid of her stuff, but someone had the brilliant idea to tap a keg and make a profit off her anachronistic style. The dusty, moth-eaten quilts on the walls range from faded brown to very faded brown, the couches all have 100% authentic butt grooves, there's a hoover on a rack on the wall, sitting right on top of a weathered suitcase, and for some reason, there's a pair each of men's and women's shoes nailed above the entrance.

Tacky paintings from forgotten hacks

The coffee itself is decent for its price, but far from the most intriguing aspect of the place. The board on one wall boasts of four separate kinds of cheap artisan beers on tap, a pint running between 300 and 400, and the regulars seem to favor the macifröccs--a large wine spritzer sweetened with raspberry syrup. So, Kind Reader, whether it is to get your daily caffeine, or to numb the pain of continued existence, Mélypont is the place to go for the closest you'll ever feel time to being out of joint.

Mélypont Presszó (1053 Budapest, Magyar u. 23.)

Coffee: 6/10

Beer: 7/10

Decor: 8/10 

Prices (Ft)

Coffee: 260.-

Beer: 300.-