Eva and Joe Low's
Blue Duna is a small Budapest in Miami Beach.

In Hungary, Duna means Danube, the river that flows through the heart of Budapest.

Worth the visit is the halaszle csi-pos, a fish soup served in a rustic metal pot dangling over a warmer candle — an echo of the big pot in which it's traditionally cooked over an outdoor fire.

 

Other starters include lobster bisque, cucumber salad and stuffed cabbage with a light but meaty ground beef and rice filling served with sour cream.

There are also crepes Hortobagyi, named for a city on the great plain of northwest Hungary. Thin palacsinta (pancakes) are rolled up with diced chicken breast in a sour cream and paprika sauce.

By now you should be toasting your dinner companions with a crisp Debroi white wine or Egri Bikaver red — the famous "bulls blood of Eger" — and saying "Egezsegedre!" (To good health!)

Eva might slip you a glass thimble of barackpalinka (apricot schnapps) and Janos Nagy, the Hungarian house musician, breaks into a lively dance tune. .

For your main course choose from chicken paprikas served with galuska (small, fluffy dumplings), cigany pecsenye (Gypsy steak), a pork loin seasoned with paprika and garlic and topped with sauteed onions or pork tenderloin smothered hi lecsd — stewed bell peppers, tomatoes and onion with paprika.
There's also hearty veal goulash on a bed of dumplings, tender roasted veal chops in mushroom gravy, baked salmon filet with dill sauce and half a roasted duckling with crispy skin and meltingly moist flesh, perfect with a marmalade-like orange sauce and scalloped potatoes.

End a jellyroll-style baked treat made of sweet, yeasty dough filled with honey, raisins, lemon zest and ground walnuts or poppy seeds. Team it with a glass of Tokai Aszu dessert wine and you will be saying "Joetvagyat'." Bon appetit!

If you have overindulged, which is easy to do here, just ask for the Unicom, a digestive liqueur made from 42 herbs.

Blue Duna, 17749 Collins Ave., Sunny Isles Beach; 305-931-0176; 5 p.m. to whenever the party ends (often 2 a.m.) Tuesday-Sunday.