One of Hungary’s most iconic restaurants closes, guests mourn

Győr, Hungary’s 6th largest city, is mourning: after 42 years, the Arrabona retro food bar closes. But before that, everyone wants to eat one last mushroom hot sandwich in the county seat of Sopron county.

The building will be completely transformed

Sandwich fever is sweeping through Győr, the sandwich fever of the former co-op store, Telex writes. In a few days, the food bar of the Arrabona department store, opened in 1980, will disappear, along with its legendary mushroom hot sandwich, whose recipe is as old as the place itself.

The former largest commercial centre of Sopron County is being transformed. Details are not known, but it is certain that the food bar on the upper level will close for good on 26 November. In August, it became known that the three-storey Arrabona store, opened in 1980, was to be completely transformed. The owners’ plans are to sacrifice the popular retro food bar and its menu, which was once even leafed through by the county party secretary.

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Guests will miss the mushroom hot sandwich the most

This is the place that the people of Győr cling to most fiercely. Especially since the manager announced that he would not wait for the promised doomsday next year and would close down for good on 26 November. Two weeks ago, there was a rush for the bull liver, but above all for the mushroom hot sandwich, which was last seen in the eighties.

The recipe for the sandwich was invented in 1980 by István Pető, the first head of the food bar and József Venesz Prize-winning master chef from Győr. The preparation process has been changed minimally, but the taste is the same. It has even been baked in the same oven for 42 years!

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Huge rush before the bar closes forever

Just when the restaurant was running low on staff towards the end of its life, the bar was hit by a 30-35 year old rush: 400 sandwiches a day were baked in one oven. In the 1980s, on better days, 1,000 sandwiches were baked in two ovens, but by many more workers.

“It’s a constant rush from morning to 6 PM, and the queue is huge. We have two or three times the usual number of guests, and five out of six eat a hot sandwich for the last time. Last Saturday, we ran out, something that has never happened in forty-two years,” says Zoltán Mike.

Unfortunately, Mike says it was a very good decision to close on 26 November. They regret it the most, but they couldn’t cope with the energy bills and the rise in raw material prices, as well as the uncertainty that has flattened the workforce.

“We have an amazing amount of traffic, but if we announced that everything would stay the same, not even a fraction of this crowd would come in,”

added Zoltán Mike.

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Source: Telex.hu, Facebook