This restaurant carries the name of a man who only took it over fourteen years after the exhibition. In the festive summer of 1896 it was called Wampetics, and that was the address everyone in the park knew. The zoo had brought in Wampetich Ferenc as a tenant in 1888, he built the building you see here at his own expense in 1894, and he had it remodelled once more for the millennium celebrations. The name became a household word in Pest, turning up even in a cabaret song, and at the tables you would find writers, government ministers and actors. From those years comes the joke about the fly floating in the soup of Podmaniczky Frigyes, the same man who later chaired the jury for the statue of in the castle district.
In 1910 Gundel Károly took over the place and put his own name on the facade. He knew the trade from childhood. His father János had come from Bavaria to Buda in 1857 as a thirteen-year-old, started out in small taverns, had his own establishment by the age of twenty-five and became the man who brought the Wiener schnitzel onto Budapest menus. From 1876 he spent years as chairman of the association of hotel keepers and restaurateurs.
We walk down Gundel Károly út, with the Szépművészeti, the Museum of Fine Arts, on our right, back to the square where we started.
Sources. Story: hu.wikipedia on the tenancy of Wampetich Ferenc from 1888, the building by Zrumetzky Dezső from 1894, the remodelling for the millennium, the anecdote about Podmaniczky Frigyes and the career of Gundel János; Magyar Kereskedelmi és Vendéglátóipari Múzeum on the takeover by Gundel Károly in 1910; We Love Budapest on Gundel János and the Wiener schnitzel Photos: Steve Talas, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; unknown photographer, 1905, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
