I’m fortunate enough to be spending the month of September in an apartment high up on the Buda side of the city. On my Buda bucket list are swimming at one of the pools on Margaret Island, going for a tramp across the Buda Hills, investing in coffee and cake at the Scandinavian-style Nor/ma Grand café, just down from Széll Kálmán tér, among the fragrant locals, and taking in a movie at the Bem cinema. Most of all, I’m salivating at the thought of eating hekk or hake and fries down at Római Strand.

Growing up in the United Kingdom by the North Sea, I can only remember eating freshwater fish once. My father brought some eels he caught back from a fishing trip; he breaded and fried them, and they tasted of mud and misery.

Back in the 1970s, when there were still enough cod in the North Sea to mean fish and chips was a meal a family could afford, we only ever ate hake when we wanted an even cheaper alternative. An extraordinarily densely fleshed fish, hake filled you up in a way the delicately flaked cod never did. It was like eating a piece of battered driftwood.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived in Hungary and discovered that freshwater fish, tasting only mildly earthy, is a restaurant staple and hake, known here as hekk, is the treat du nyári.

The first big question to consider about hekk is why it’s in landlocked Hungary in the first place. At first, I thought it must have been brought into the country from one of its neighbors with a seaside; Croatia, perhaps.

Seaside Sentimentalists

I’d learned that, having had their coast stolen from them by the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, Hungarians are deeply sentimental about the sea and thought that eating saltwater fish could be a way of connecting to the country’s marine past. A culinary version of those Hungarian TV weather reports that show conditions in parts of what was this country before it was sliced and diced by the victorious and not at all vindictive Allied and associated powers.

The fact that hekk is not one of the many types of sea fish found in Croatian waters rather scuppered this theory. Sea bream, monkfish, sardines, John Dory and Dentex, which sounds like a brand of false teeth fixative to me but is, apparently, delicious grilled or baked, yes. But not hekk.

I’ve been given a more prosaic potential reason for the rise of the hekk here. Hungary began exporting its highest-quality freshwater fish to other countries in the 1960s, but this led to a shortage of decent local pike-perch, carp, or catfish. Frozen hake was imported from Argentina to fill the gap.

Argentinian or, as I prefer, Hubbsi hake is found in large shoals in the cold waters of the South Atlantic near Argentina, Uruguay and the British Overseas Territory of the Falkland Islands, and is caught using vast nets that trawl the Atlantic seabed.

I had thought the name “Hubbsi” might point to a Hungarian connection, as it sounds like the kind of nickname one Magyar lad might give another, but it’s actually a tribute to prominent ichthyologist or fish studier Carl Leavitt Hubbs. He also gave his name to a dried-up lake in Nevada.

Delightful Mouthfeel

Hubbsi hake meat is white and extremely low in fat, which adds to the flavor when you bite into a greasy chunk coated in sweet, paprika-infused flour. One serving of hekk will give you most of your recommended daily intake of vitamin B12. It’s also not a particularly bony fish, which makes it more child-friendly.

These factors have made Hubbsi hake one of the most consumed salt fish in Europe. The Spanish, who seem to eat anything that comes from the sea and have, of course, close ties with Argentina and Uruguay, eat around 6 kg a year. Other major consumers are France, Portugal and the United Kingdom.

I must admit that I’ve only ever eaten hekk at the Római Strand, at my Hungarian sister-in-law’s favorite restaurant. She and her husband decided on this particular place after sampling the fish at all the other hekkeries on the strand. I have no idea what it’s called. All I know is that they talk about visiting “The Hekk Man.” But I don’t think wandering along Római Strand asking “Have you seen the Hekk Man?” is going to help you find hekk-heaven.

In any case, I think you should take responsibility for your own hekk choices. I know from bitter experience that if I recommend a particular joint as serving the best whatever in the city, someone will visit and delight in telling me that it wasn’t anywhere near as good as the whatever they had somewhere else.

Mind you, I’m intrigued by the Dunaparty Stop restaurant in Újbuda on the banks of the Danube opposite Savoya Park, which serves hekk, lángos, and beer from a British red double-decker bus.

The truth is, wherever you eat your hekk, outside a transplanted double-decker bus or from the aforementioned Hekkmester on Római Strand, it is going to be served with “csemege uborka” pickles, white bread, mayonnaise or tartar sauce, and sweet paprika-dusted fries. If you’re choosing a hekk specialist, you might want to adopt the time-honored principle of picking a place that’s packed with what look like locals, especially if they’re of a certain age. After that, it comes down to factors like the size of your hekk, whether it’s piping hot or not, the generosity of the pickle portion and, most telling, the quality of the fries.

Római Strand is easily accessible by public transport or bicycle. If you’re thinking of driving, bear in mind that it can be hard to find a parking space, especially at the weekend, and, given the zero-tolerance approach to drink-driving in this country, you will not be able to wash down your fish with anything alcoholic.

This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of September 5, 2025.