Plan your first day
Your First Day in Budapest, Bucharest or Belgrade: Where to Eat
Three cities, three honest 24-hour eating plans — from the airport bus to a proper sit-down first breakfast, and on to dinner.
The first meal in a new city sets the tone for the whole trip, and it is the one you have the least information for. These guides answer the question we hear most from guests still carrying their luggage: where should I eat first? One plan per city, written by the people who open the doors every morning in Budapest, Bucharest and Belgrade.
Each guide follows the same shape, because a first day tends to. It starts with the arrival itself: which airport bus or metro drops you closest to the centre, and what to do with the first hour when your room is not ready yet. Then comes the first morning, and this is where we are on home ground. Cookie Beacon is a sit-down brunch spot, walk-ins only, no reservations at any of our 5 locations, so a first breakfast does not need planning — you turn up when you wake up. In Budapest we open Mon–Fri 08:00–17:00, Sat–Sun 09:00–17:00 at both brunch spots, in Bucharest we open 09:00–18:00 daily at both brunch spots and in Belgrade we open 09:00–18:00 daily.
After the first morning, the guides leave our tables and walk you through the rest of the day: the sights that sit within a few minutes of where you just ate, a midday stop that locals would actually choose, a coffee-and-cookie break when your feet give out, and where to go for a proper dinner in the part of town that does evenings well. The Belgrade plan ends in the kafanas of Skadarlija; the Bucharest one steers you away from the tourist core of the Old Town and toward Calea Victoriei; the Budapest one runs on clock times from landing to the last course and adds pointers for day two and three.
A few things are true in all three cities and worth knowing before you read. Every guide names real streets and real opening hours, checked against our own doors and updated when they change — the date on each entry below is the last time we did. Vegan and vegetarian options are marked on the menu in every city, with reduced seed oils in the vegan dishes. Dogs are welcome. And the cookies are baked in-house every morning, so the mid-afternoon stop the guides recommend is not a throwaway line.
If you would like a second opinion before you commit a first morning to us, our guests have left 33,827 Google reviews, averaging 4.8★ across our 5 brunch spots. The city pages linked at the bottom of this guide carry the reviews written about each spot.
Pick your city below. Where a guide exists in Romanian or Serbian as well as English, the other-language version is listed under it.
Pick a city
Where to eat first, city by city
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2 brunch spots First day in Budapest
Where to eat on your first day in Budapest: what to do after landing, brunch near St. Stephen's Basilica, a 24-hour food itinerary with clock times, and day 2-3 pointers.
Read the guide -
2 brunch spots First day in Bucharest
Where to eat on your first day in Bucharest: brunch at Cookie Beacon off Piața Romană near the Athenaeum, lunch along Calea Victoriei, afternoon coffee and cookies, then dinner.
Read the guide -
1 brunch spot First day in Belgrade
Just landed in Belgrade? Start with brunch at Cookie Beacon near Republic Square, then walk Knez Mihailova to Kalemegdan. An honest first-day eating plan.
Read the guide
All the guides
Every first-day guide, in every language we publish
Hours, addresses and reviews
Our brunch spots in each city
Every address, the opening hours for each spot and the Google reviews written about it live on the city pages.
Landed? Walk in — no reservation needed.
Walk in for brunch and a chunky cookie at any of our five spots. No booking needed.