Alexei Korolyov
The filings.
The soundtrack to a $60 loaf of bread
Alexei wrote the album playing in New York's most talked-about bakery. Here is how that happened, why a Graz bread chain went viral, and what background music legally costs you in Hungary, Romania and Austria.
Summer ends, the labour shortage changes postcode
The season closed, the people who ran it are between contracts for six weeks, but some already have a start date in Tyrol.
Her product strategy was to get banned by the Orthodox Church
How Central Europe's most sacred dishes became its best marketing assets.
Heatwave menus and 50°C kitchens, Bucharest under water and the treacherous Austrian sausage
Record heat, flooded basements, carcinogenic sausages, an ice-cream shortage, and kitchen life at 45°C in five reels.
The tenderloin comes off the menu before its price goes up
Third and final in a three-part series: operators in Romania, Hungary and Austria on how they set prices, defend margins, and read a guest who is spending less. We finish in Vienna.
Cheaper vegetables, tone-deaf tomatoes, and when food festivals work for operators
What the planned Hungarian VAT cut won't do, what the Austrian Ministry of Agriculture got wrong, and where post-event sales actually show up.
The restaurants AI recommends, and why
We asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude where to eat in Budapest, Bucharest and Vienna, then asked them why. The answers show who is visible, who is missing, and why Google still sits underneath most AI restaurant discovery.