Kitti Gosztola

BUFFET GAUSS – HUNGARIAN TO GO: DIVORCE ON THE BEACH (2017)

 

fish cocktail

 

What should a “Hungarian seafood buffet" offer? Coming from a notable Italian family of Fiume, Vittorio Gauss/Viktor Garády was a self-educated marine expert and a steadfast Hungarian patriot. As a founder of Hungary's only marine station he all but managed to erect a PPP multi-store marine research station - a tourist attraction & aquarium complete with a "Hungarian style buffet, where strangers could pleasantly meet."

 

This unrealized idea presented a paradox: With a landlocked cuisine what could make seafood taste “Hungarian”? What could the chances have been of such a fusion kitchen of nations when Austria-Hungary was already disintegrating. 

The question was addressed through reviving the idea of a Buffet Gauss with an opening meal - a red-white-green Hungarian-to-go fish cocktail, "Divorce on the Beach" - Croatian shark soup with spherized goulash.