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Szilárd Tóth

Salt

Szilárd Tóth is a chef and co-owner of SALT restaurant. His dishes are reminiscent of his birthplace, the county of Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg, and they invite a familiar, childhood nostalgia formed perfectly into a fine dining experience.

“I became concerned with gastronomy at a very young age as I was a lot by myself and even as a kid you want to pass the time when you’re bored, so I watched how they cook on TV and tried to imitate the way they prepare things and brought my meals to the neighbours or to the saleslady at the greengrocer’s. “

Nature and tradition

Chef Szilárd believes that two things are eternal: nature and tradition. Moreover, for chef Szilárd Hungarian fine dining could not exist without Hungarian traditions.

“There is no need to reimagine anything, it is enough to walk the existing paths. The point is to keep working with those same traditions, flavour pairings or grandmother’s recipes typical of certain regions, and thus create new dishes to move Hungarian gastronomy forward”

Roots in Hungarian cuisine

Salt Budapest was created on the foundations of the traditional Hungarian cuisine, where Chef Szilárd Tóth’s kitchen herbs and wild plants play an important role. All ingredients come only from trustworthy source. Majority of these is collected by the chef himself in the countryside, the rest is produced by farmers. Everything in the dishes is freshly pickled and fermented.

The poultry products come from Szilard’s own family meat manufacture from Szatmár. Similarly, bread is a prominent part of the Hungarian food culture. Therefore, Szilárd bakes and serves bread himself every day. The Chef’s table stands in the middle of the restaurant so that guests could easily have a few words with the hosts.

This is how they have already obtained different recognitions and awards that highlight their effort to understand the value of ancestral techniques such as fermentation, drying and salting.