Meron Arany Janos

Eggs benedict on sweet potatoes

Build the order around the eggs benedict served on sweet potatoes. It is the dish this branch is known for, gluten-free by construction rather than by substitution, and it is the clearest reason to treat Meron as a brunch address rather than a coffee counter with food attached. Whatever else changes on the plates, that one holds.

Coffee runs in parallel and is not an afterthought. MERON presents itself as specialty coffee and brunch in that order, and the beans are roasted in Transylvania, which gives the bar a regional supply line rather than a rotating cast of international roasters. The range on the menu is wide enough to spend a few visits working through.

A daytime room built for lingering

This branch works as an everyday Budapest café: coffee, brunch, lunch and takeaway, with tables people stay at rather than a queue that moves. It suits casual meetings and study sessions, and it copes with larger groups better than the average specialty bar, which is worth knowing if you are more than two.

The format is daytime throughout. There is no coursed dinner service to plan around, so the room fills with the brunch crowd, then with people working, then with the late-afternoon coffee stop. It is a café first, and the kitchen is built to support that pattern rather than to replace it. Service is relaxed instead of formal, and nobody hurries the table.

How to order

Start with the sweet-potato eggs benedict and a coffee, and let the rest of the plate follow from there. The kitchen leans brunch rather than an itemised all-day list, so asking what is being served that morning is more useful than reading the menu top to bottom. If you are meeting someone, this is a room that tolerates a long sit, so order in stages rather than all at once.

If coffee is the priority, order it separately and pay attention to it: the Transylvanian roast is the through-line across the MERON branches and the thing that connects this room to the rest of the group. Takeaway works if you are passing, but the café is more rewarding sat down, which is how most people use it. Takeaway covers a rushed morning, but it misses most of what the room is good at.