I recently went to Budapest for Christmas, and as is the worry of most people eating abroad when they have an allergy, I was worried what I would be able to eat and if I’d be able to discover if any foods had lactose in them.

Budapest was actually a pleasant surprise. Many of the foods you buy pre packaged will have English ingredients listed. This is not true for everything but there are enough choices that you’ll be able to find something you can eat. Even hams and meats had labels like “lactose free” and “gluten free”.

The most pleasant surprise was this place! Miden SAJT, LAKTOZ MENTES! Those words look like lactose, maybe lactoz means cheese..what no! Every cheese is lactose free! Real cheese like Brie, Camembert, Emental,everything! It was amazing. As much as I wanted to bring the entire stand home I grabbed some of the lactose free Brie and devoured it over the course of my holiday. They had blue cheeses for fans of blue cheese but personally I’m a lover of Brie. As much as I like the lactofree brand..these cheeses were stunning. I’m not sure what makes them free of lactose, whether its the breed of cow or animal or something during the cheese making process but I’m grateful this exists, its a shame I can’t see anything similar in the UK.

Another place we found was a Spanish place called Pata Negra

http://www.patanegra.hu/

This was really good Spanish food and complete random to find but was great. And the best part – they labelled which foods were Sin Lactosa. This meant I could chow down on all the delicious tapas without the worry there were sneaky ingredients or butter in the recipe. I really enjoyed it and didn’t expect to find such a nice Tapas place in Budapest. Would recommend a visit if you are in the area.

Not all the restaurants had those kinds of labels on their menus but a lot of waiting staff did seem to know which foods had been cooked in butter or oil.

Budapest was really lovely at Christmas time and makes a great place to eat if you’re looking for a trip where you know you’ll be able to eat the local food. I personally had a lot of trouble finding Lactose free products in Italy, but Hungary was almost the complete opposite.

You also need to make sure you try Unicum. Try the Unicum Zwack first – its probably one of the worst things I’ve every tasted, but the Unicum Next was actually quite nice, like a milder jagermeister in taste, but a stronger percentage.