THE MANGALICA FESTIVAL

The Mangalica Festival.

Exploring Budapest winter-fair dedicated to pork lovers.

Spoiler alert! 

In this article you can fill your eyes with MANY photos of pigs and related pork products that will be enough for years.

Caro and Fab went in full oink-mode exploring the Mangalica Festival in Budapest, the Hungarian winter-fair dedicated to the local pig variety called Mangalica (also known as Mangalitsa or Mangalitza… well you got the idea).

This beast is the fattiest hog in the world with around 60% of his carcass being delicious, greasy fat.

We spent a full morning roaming around, and we liked it so much we came back in the afternoon to enjoy live music and buy traditional products and a butt-ton of pork meat.

Here is our review of this carnivore El Dorado.

And check our article 3 days in Budapest to get our full itinerary in the city.

(A big thank you to the organisers of the fair for sharing some of their photos!)

A PIG STORY

Have you ever heard of the Mangalica pork breed?

We had not, until winter 2018, when we laid our eyes on a sleeping beauty of ½ ton with blonde curly hair. That pig was weirdly looking like an overgrown sheep but it was, in fact, a fine specimen of the Mangalica family.

This pork breed was created two hundred years ago, crossing the best pigs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with a Serbian breed and wild boar, in order to give birth to a new, quick-growing fatty hog, requiring little maintenance and with a low-cholesterol meat. 

And the expert royal breeders – somehow – managed to make it taste incredibly good.

THE TOUGH TIMES

Unfortunately, life wasn't always easy for the Mangalica pigs.

In 1991 this breed was literally one step away from extinction with less than 200 animals left worldwide.

The reasons were multiple and simple: the introduction of vegetable oils to replace lard, the increase of industrial farming that didn’t suit the Mangalica pigs and finally the idea that saturated fats – those wonderful juicy fats – were not that great for your health.

It took a few years and a combined effort between a Spanish private company and Hungary to literally save the bacon.

THE FESTIVAL

Hungarians love their pigs and they honour them every year with a bespoke festival.

It's called Mangalica Festival (official website) and it's held every February since 2008 in Budapest, near Szabadság Square – a stone's throw away from the Parliament and the Danube. 

The festival became so popular that more dates have been added. After Budapest, the fair moves its pigs to Debrecen, the second largest city in Hungary, and Székesfehérvár, near the Balaton lake.

If you are a meat-lover like us and want to visit Budapest in winter, but don’t know exactly when to go… we strongly recommend travelling around the festival weekend!

The Budapest Mangalica festival lasts for an entire weekend and it’s free to enter… hooray!

The closest metro stations are Arany János Street (on the M3 line) and Kossuth Lajos tér (on the M2 line), so there are no excuses to miss it.

Under the austere gaze of the US Embassy and the National Bank buildings, the festival stretches out in a circle with hundreds of stalls proudly exhibiting their self-made Mangalica product, in a lively, fair-like atmosphere.

The breeders cure and sell their own meat according to the traditional technique. 

There’s also an animal exhibit area where you can see the different types of Mangalica pigs.

If your diet is pork-friendly, you have plenty to shop on. 

Here’s a non-comprehensive list of goodies you can buy at the festival: literally every type of sausage (from the dry ones to the smoked kolbász), hams, greasy Hungarian salami, bacon, pate, greaves, lard, cracklings and much, much more.

MORE THAN JUST OINK!

This colourful gastronomic fair has a lot more to offer than just pork goodies.

Vendors of any type sell their hand-crafted traditional products from all over Hungary. 

We loved the selection of soft smoked cheese, the craft beers and flavoured olive oils and dressing (worth checking the powerful GaBko chilli sauce stand). We followed our sweet tooth and obviously stocked up with delicious plum jams and acacia honey from a local producer.

One of the “not to miss” stall is the kürtoskalács, the popular spit cake roasted over charcoal and sprinkled with cinnamon: delicious but impossible to eat without making a mess of yourself.

For booze lovers, there are plenty of stalls selling a delicious artisan marzipan liqueur and many varieties of palinka, the Hungarian strong fruit distillate (40-50%) made from local fruits from their fertile plains: we strongly recommend the palinka made from birsalma (quince) or szilva (plum).

The palinka reminded us of the taste (and strength) of rakija from the Balkans, or the Italian grappa.

THE SQUEEZE THOUGHTS

We really loved the mood of the fair and the entertainment provided, so we decided to stick around listening to a jazz band playing on the main stage.

As expected, the cold weather hit us hard but we endured it thanks to a few cups of spicy mulled wine… man's best friend in wintertime! 

The selection of street foods was impressive and the prices were almost unbeatable, you can literally eat at the fair for three consecutive days and always find something different and surprising for your palate.

In full Hungarian style, we enjoyed the warm goulash soup served in a fragrant bread bowl with potatoes and sauerkraut on the side, a hearth-melting lunch for two bread lovers like us.

Most of the mains cost 6-10€ pp, the portions were generous and we found plenty of seating space.

The Squeeze personal recommendation is to fill your boots with the lángos, a Hungarian treat like no other: a deep fried dough served with melted cheese.

Fab decided to add a sausage on top because, well… because he’s Fab.