Roots and stars – Szatmár Dry Cured

Szilárd Tóth feels that an award is inspiring: it opens new doors, stimulates the desire for knowledge for him. He wants to carry out his mission, complete it. What’s like salt: it’s perfectly simple, we take it for granted, it’s in everything, and if it isn’t: we realize then, we can really miss it. Salt is the same as its name: even its furnishings are concise, without circumlocution: the chef does not work somewhere in the back, in the kitchen, but in the restaurant space, among the guests. The objects are unique but elegantly simple. Like the concept itself: finding back to the roots, to regional cuisine.

When Salt appeared, it exploded big in the world of restaurants. It was opened half a year before the outbreak of pandemic and did not try to introduce itself and entice guests with special discounts, but with relatively rare rules in the world of catering. The criterions of reservation are strict and fair: Schwarzenegger had to be dismissed last time because they could not accommodate him. To make the restaurant experience perfect, the number of guests was set at a maximum of 32. All the places are currently sold out for two months in advance. The price of the menu will be charged even if the guest changes his / her mind and does not show up. The sensitive domestic audience easily accepted these rules because they were obvious: these are all for them, for the better guest experience. The restaurant represents the fine dining line, yet we do not look for the lobster fork on the table with protruding little fingers: there is no tableware for the first dishes. The food can be grabbed, in fact: you can dunk, go to the chef and have a few words with him. Until now casual, homey fine dining was an unknown concept: in Salt you can experience this, if you are lucky enough to get a table there.

Salt is considered by many people to be the domestic representative of the new wave of Scandinavia, which is characterized by seasonality, smart sustainability, cooperation with the immediate environment and nature. But Szilárd Tóth firmly believes that the cuisine of Szatmár, he experienced as a child, provides the basis with this. He comes from a small town in eastern Hungary, Mátészalka, his first culinary experiments date back to his childhood: his parents worked hard and he got into the kitchen at home in his boredom following the cooking shows. That it happened in this region, Szatmár, is a special fortune: this corner of the country is perhaps the only one that has a special, regional cuisine. It has not a few typical dishes, but a whole cookbook of them.

Szilárd tasted the dishes of the typical folk cuisine of Szatmár at his grandmother's dining table. Why are they so special? Because we either don’t find them anywhere else, or they exist, but they are made in a very different way. In other way, however, these flavours – and most of all the culinary experiences of childhood - are echoed at dinner in Salt. Szilárd's heart still throbs today – I whisper like anyone from Szatmár living anywhere in the world – as he is going home and crosses Tisza, which flows along the border of his homeland. The concept of the restaurant is that its guests in a relaxed atmosphere, receiving maximum attention can relive their experiences which connecting to tastes, evoke their sweetest, most intimate family- community-childhood memories. The staff working in Salt go back to their roots according to the Scandinavian method – which originates in Szatmár in this case. In the restaurant the world champion hams, the mangalitza bacon are from the farm of Szilárd’s family in Nyírmeggyes, where premium hams are dried in an adobe house.

The concept of the restaurant is that its guests in a relaxed atmosphere, receiving maximum attention can relive their experiences which connecting to tastes, evoke their sweetest, most intimate family-community-childhood memories. The staff working in Salt go back to their roots according to the Scandinavian method - which originates in Szatmár in this case. In the restaurant the world champion hams, the mangalitza bacon are from the farm of Szilárd’s family in Nyírmeggyes, where premium hams are dried in an adobe house.