Szegedinsky Goulash: Part 1

October 3, 2025

About a week ago I suddenly had an urge for a Slovak national dish , Szegedinsky Goulash — a dish I had the last time months, if not years, ago, in Bratislava. So I figured it was time to partake in something so vital to the national psyche. I feel I am becoming Slovakian (or, as someone local said to me recently — it’s more like being Balkan…) and thus I figured I might as well consecrate this evolution from North American to Slovakian (with a Balkan detour). And so I felt compelled to indulge in pork simmered in sauerkraut, onions, and pepper with a side of thick-cut slices of white bread to soak up all the sauce. How difficult could such a quest be?

My first trip, with Alexander, was to a restaurant in the suburbs (Trenčín is so small I’m not sure that ‘suburbs’ is the correct word — let’s say, the housing district on the edge of town?), a local joint he frequents and gave me the reassurance that their Szegedinsky is excellent. It wasn’t. That’s because it wasn’t even on the menu. The waitress stated that the kitchen didn’t feel like serving it that day; I was out of luck. I went with the Wiener Schnitzel (veal) and a mayonnaise (?) side salad. I thought at first it would just be a small bowl of thick, congealed white stuff, which, frankly, repulsed me when Alexander translated, but I tried not to show my horror at having to eat a bowl of mayo. He said this is what they eat at Christmas time, and I could see how excited he was to eat it. I think he grabbed his fork prior to the weird side dish landing, scooping up the salad with such delight I really thought it was Christmas time. Luckily, it was not just a plain bowl of mayonnaise, but what the Ukrainians (and others in the region) would call a salad Olivia — indeed, this is what gets eaten at special occasions. It’s an old Soviet dish where mayo is fused with a few potatoes, little cubes of ham, maybe a boiled egg mashed in, and, depending on who makes it, chunks of carrot. But every salad Olivia has as one its main ingredients and one of my most hated food items ever, peas. I can thank my mom for ruining what supposedly is a delicious vegetable. I’d rather lick the boot of Donald Trump and the rest of his corrupt cronies than ever put a pea in my mouth. I diligently plucked the little bastards out of my mayonnaise salad and exiled them to the side of my plate, as ruthless as Ramón Mercader wielded a pick axe against his enemy . The Schnitzel was great and that sated me enough till the next day when I would have some Szegedinsky Goulash.

There’s definitely Salad Olivia on this table (this is the day I was made to shoot a vodka bottle in the distance with a gun if I wanted to visit the mine. I did; the man on the right cried and called me bratuschka — brother.) Pictures turned out terrible.

That was not to be. The next restaurant I went to seemed to be a traditional brew pub serving Slovak national dishes — I mean the logo looks like some kind of medieval peasants plowing a field or something, so I fiugured if a restaurant is using such conditions of labour as a selling point, then of course there will be Szegedinsky Goulash.

“Do you have Szegedinsky Goulash?” I asked.

“No.”

I left.

I was definitely mad, which meant I — once again — had to go to the pizza place across the way. Granted, the pizza is pretty good, and cheap: only €3 for two slices but by this point I’ve probably had enough pizza slices to make Buckminster Fuller weep of rhombicosidodecahedron jealousy.

The next day I forgot to eat, so Szegedinsky was out. Instead, I had some leftover sausage sticks and stale water that tastes like salt. I bought a big case of this water, only to be immediately repulsed by the first sip, but I was so thirsty I drained that bottle anyway. I thought to myself: please don’t ever become shipwrecked because more than likely I’ll be the first to take a giant gulp of seawater and then that’s it: dead from kidney failure and dehydration.

Now I didn’t even care if I even liked Szegedinsky Goulash; the point was to find it and eat it and prove a point. The next few days went by, met with constant nos: instead, on offer throughout town is a cornucopia of stupid smash burgers, gourmet hot dogs (maybe…) Poké effing bowls, more schnitzel and churros. But no Szegedinsky Goulash! Where was I? What country! Soon, I could sense my inner-Carlton Heston was erupting.

But then something happened. I was the studios of the FOR MAAT crew, great saviours of my work here, and I mentioned how impossible it was to find this infernal Szegedinsky Goulash.

“Did you try Speranza?” Martin asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “They have very nice schnitzel,” I said. (True, really good potatoes too).

“They have really good pizza,” said Jozef. I caught his wandering eye, dreaming of some vegetarian ensemble I figured.

They threw a litany of restaurant names at me: most I didn’t know, or didn’t understand, or had already tried. The common refrain was surprise on their part: how could there be no Szegedinsky Goulash? Impossible. They set out to resolve the matter.

END OF PART ONE

(I am tired and its time to go home)