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Cha Cha Cha Terasz
In the stadium at the southern tip of Margaret Island, Cha Cha Cha Terasz is an attitude-free venue with great music and dance space.
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Champs Sport Bar
Owned by five local Olympic medallists, Champs is the place for sports fans and the vicarious, with two huge screens and 35 TVs. There a wide choice of low-fat 'fitness meals' along with the less healthy favourites of armchair athletes. The menu tells you how many calories and how much fat each dish contains - and what you need to do lose it.
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Club Bohemian Alibi
This club attracts ladies and gentlemen, and anything in between. It's the preferred watering hole of Budapest's burgeoning TV population, so if you're into cross-dressing or cross-dressers, this is the place to be.
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Club Vittula
Probably the best place to get drunk and dance in Budapest at the moment, with cutting-edge DJs and cheap Slovakian blond (beer that is). Need we say more?
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Columbus Jazzklub
On a boat moored in the Danube just north of V Vigadó tér, opposite the Budapest Inter-Continental Hotel, this club has transformed itself from being 'just another Irish pub' to a jazz club of note, with big-name local and international bands.
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Comedy Theatre
The attractive little theatre, roughly in the middle of the Szent István körút section of the 'Big Ring Road', is the venue for comedies and musicals.
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Corvin Film Palace
This place saw a lot of action during the 1956 revolution, and led a different sort of revolution four decades later - the introduction of state-of-the-art sound systems and comfortable seating. It has now been fantastically renovated, and is worth a visit. Note the two wonderful reliefs outside and the monument to the Pesti srácok, the heroic 'kids from Pest' who fought and died here in 1956.
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Cotton Club
This centrally located restaurant and nightclub with gangster-and-moll décor (complete with cigar room) has live jazz - or let's say 'jazz lite' - nightly at or .
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Coxx Pub
This gay cellar bar with the in-your-face name has a DJ and small dance floor, but it's more of a pub than a club. There's a gallery and Internet café at street level just to let you know this place has a serious side too.
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Darshan Udvar
This cavernous complex of two bars, a restaurant and a courtyard-terrace vegetarian café is a great escape from the bars of VI Liszt Ferenc tér and IX Ráday utca. In fact, Krúdy utca may be poised to take over as Budapest's next after-hours strip.
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Demmer's Teaház
This cosy little teahouse next to the Mammut shopping mall is the place to come in Buda if you're serious about your cuppa cha. There's also a Pest branch at VI Podmaniczky utca 14.
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Duna Palota
This elaborate 'palace' diagonally opposite the main Central European University building hosts light classical music and touristy musical revues in summer. Its biggest drawcard is its folk-dance performances.
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Erkel Theatre
Budapest's modern (and ugly) second opera house is southwest of Keleti train station. Tickets are sold just inside the main door.
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Erzsébet-híd Eszpresszó
If you're in the mood for a relaxing drink in simple surrounds, the 'Elizabeth Bridge Espresso Bar' is a wonderful old dive with a large terrace that has views of the bridge. Most locals call it Platán in honour of the big plane tree sheltering the outdoor tables.
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Fat Mo's Music Club
With a speakeasy Prohibition theme, and enough beer and booze to fill Bonnie and Clyde (with bullets, that is), FM's has live jazz (and sometimes country) from or daily. DJs take over at midnight from Thursday to Saturday.
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Fehér Gyűrű
The 'White Ring' has always been a firm favourite and it's still not clear why. Perhaps it's opposite the 'White House' and it's always fun to spot MPs. More likely it's because there are so few pubs in this area.
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Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music
A block southeast of Oktogon, what's usually just called the 'music academy' was built in 1907. It attracts students from all over the world, and is one of the top venues for concerts. The interior, with large and small concert halls richly embellished with Zsolnay porcelain and frescoes, is worth a look even if you're not attending a performance.
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Folklór Centrum
This cultural house presents folk music every Friday and a children's dance house hosted by the incomparable Muzsikás every Tuesday.
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Fonó Buda Music House
Fonó Buda has regular programmes on Wednesday and the second Friday of each month as well as concerts by big-name bands throughout each month; it's one of the best venues in town for this sort of thing. Consult the website for more details.
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Gerlóczy Kávéház
This wonderful retro-style café looks out onto one of Pest's most attractive little squares, and serves excellent snacks and light meals, including a cheese plate sent over from the Nagy Tamás cheese shop around the corner.
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Gödör Klub
This venue in the old bus bays below Erzsébet tér in central Pest is a real mixed bag, offering music right through the spectrum; everything from folk and jazz, but especially rock.
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Hauer Cukrászda
This Art Deco (but frayed) café along busy Rákóczi út is often overlooked in favour of its sexier cousins, and is a real find for that. The cakes may not be Gerbeaud-quality, but the place feels local and real.
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Holdudvar
This large courtyard on the grounds of the ELTE, the city's largest university, has a predictably split personality: earnest and coffee-drinking, wild and out of control.
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Hungarian State Opera House
The gorgeous neo-Renaissance opera house should be visited at least once - to admire the incredibly rich decoration inside as much as to view a performance and hear the perfect acoustics. Visits are guided (see p25).
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Incognito Café
The 'Unknown' is hardly that. It was the first café to open on what everyone now calls 'the tér', way back in 1994, and it's still low-key and going strong.
