Our Chicken & Waffles Stack is panko-crusted crispy chicken stacked on a house waffle with beetroot hummus, leafy greens, smoked bacon sauce and honey butter cream, topped with jalapeño, pomegranate, parsley and lemon zest, and served with a cone of homemade potato chips — 4,950 Ft at both Cookie Beacon brunch spots in Budapest.

It is the plate guests order when they want the sweet-and-savoury thing done properly, and it is the one dish on our brunch in Budapest menu that came home with us from a trip rather than out of a kitchen notebook.

Why a San Francisco dish is on a Budapest brunch menu

Here is the reason, from the people who put it on the card:

On our first trip together to San Francisco, we tried Chicken and Waffles in a little cute brunch place. We loved the combination of sweet syrup, crunchy chicken and soft savoury waffle. For Cookie Beacon, we decided to give the dish a little healthy and colour “upgrade” by adding beetroot hummus for extra protein and grounding, and leafy greens. Bacon syrup adds a smoky and sweet touch as a reminder of the original inspiration we had.

Three things in that are worth pulling out, because between them they are the whole plate.

The original combination is left alone. Sweet against savoury, crunch against soft — that contrast is the entire point of chicken and waffles, and nothing here is trying to be clever about it. The chicken is fried in panko so it stays audibly crisp under a sauce, and the waffle underneath is savoury rather than dessert-sweet, so it behaves like bread rather than cake.

The beetroot hummus is the actual change. It goes under the chicken, not on it, which is why it is easy to miss in a photograph and impossible to miss when you eat it. It does two jobs the original does not ask for: it adds protein — our Budapest card carries a protein-packed tag on this dish — and it puts something earthy and slightly sour beneath a plate that is otherwise crisp, sweet and rich. On the Hungarian card it is céklás hummusz.

The bacon reappears as a sauce. The Budapest card calls it a smoked bacon sauce — füstölt bacon szósz — and it is where the smoke and most of the sweetness live. It is the deliberate echo of the syrup in that San Francisco original, and the reason this doesn’t need a jug of maple on the side.

What is actually on the plate

The stack, bottom to top:

  • The waffle — savoury, made in house, and structural. It is there to be cut into with the chicken, not eaten separately afterwards.
  • Beetroot hummus and leafy greens — the greens are madársaláta, lamb’s lettuce, and they sit directly under the chicken where the sauce reaches them.
  • Panko crispy chicken — the crust is panko rather than a standard breadcrumb, which is what keeps it crunchy once the sauce is on.
  • Smoked bacon sauce and honey butter cream — mézes vajkrém — the savoury-smoky and the sweet-rich halves of the topping.
  • Jalapeño, pomegranate, parsley, lemon zest — heat, sharp little bursts, and a lift over the top of all that fat.

Alongside it comes a cone of homemade potato chips, and they are part of the dish rather than a side you order. So is the pot of sauce that arrives on the plate beside the waffle.

How to eat it

Cut down through it rather than picking the chicken off the top. Everything on this plate is built in layers and each one is doing a job for the layer next to it — the sauce for the crust, the hummus for the sauce, the waffle for all of it. A forkful with waffle, chicken and hummus together tastes like the dish; a forkful of chicken alone tastes like very good fried chicken.

The pomegranate is worth getting into each bite too. It is the only sharp, cold thing on a hot plate.

If the jalapeño is not for you, say so when you order — it goes on top in slices, so leaving it off is genuinely easy.

Where chicken and waffles comes from

Two traditions, and they have never been reconciled into one story.

The older one is Pennsylvania Dutch: waffles served with stewed or pulled chicken and gravy, a savoury dish with no frying and no syrup in sight. The one that reached brunch menus around the world is different — fried chicken with a sweet waffle, long associated with the American South and, in the twentieth century, with Harlem supper clubs where it sat neatly between a late dinner and an early breakfast.

Ours is a descendant of the second, by way of a brunch place in San Francisco. Anyone who tells you confidently that the dish has a single inventor is choosing a side.

Where it sits among our waffles

We put a waffle on two different plates in Budapest, and they are not variations on each other:

  • Chicken & Waffles Stack — savoury waffle, panko chicken, beetroot hummus, sweet-and-smoky sauce. The sweet-savoury one.
  • Grilled-Cheese Waffle-Sandwich — the waffle used as bread, with mozzarella, cheddar, feta crumble, smashed avocado and crispy bacon. The cheese one.

If you want the contrast between sweet and crunchy, this is the plate. If you want melted cheese, that is the other one.

Eating it in Budapest

A word on vocabulary, because it trips people up. Gofri is the Hungarian word you will see on signs across the city, and it almost always means the dessert waffle — bubble waffles, Belgian waffles, ice cream and chocolate sauce. That is a different trade from this. What we serve is a savoury waffle under fried chicken, in the American brunch sense, which is why our card prints it in English on the Hungarian side too.

It sits in the Hearty Brunch section, it is available all day rather than in a morning window, and both rooms are walk-in only.