Sirius teaház

Bródy Sándor u.13
Pest Centre, VII, between Kalvin ter (M3) and Astoria (M2)

Sirius Teahaz has escaped from the pages of a children’s book.

Sitting drinking my pot of Oolong tea, I contemplate the tower in the corner. It’s only the height of the room but the size of the doorway gives it a disproportionate sense of scale. I’m delighted to find that it conceals a tiny room but I’d need to be smaller to get in. Perhaps you have to drink a particular tea for that.

The whole café is an enchantingly whimsical construction. I know that there’s another room to the right of the tower because I’ve seen movement through the service hatch: a pair of socks ascending wooden steps that would look at home in a playground. But how do you get to it?

I walk through the only full-size doorway, which reveals a larger room, with sparse Chinese decoration, the carpeted floor besieged with cushions. A platform lodged in an upper corner provides just enough space for two. At the far end, the two socks that I glimpsed earlier emerge from a wardrobe. QED.

In the late evening, Sirius is a tranquil, fanciful curiosity; it’s hard to imagine though, how it can possibly make any money. The solution is revealed if you visit in the early evening, when, (and frankly to my miserly, selfish disappointment), I discovered the place awash with school-kids. Timing, then, is crucial, if you don’t want your reverie interrupted.