Hellertown: Paprikas (May 2016)

I dined at Paprikas with three family members on a weeknight in mid-May 2016. The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner from Wednesdays through Sundays (closed on Mondays and Tuesdays). Paprika’s accepts reservations via telephone. Sometimes the restaurant is filled to capacity and reservations are necessary, but other times the restaurant is empty; it is hard to predict which end of the spectrum will prevail when we visit. Complimentary street parking is available or you can use the parking lot behind the rear of the restaurant. Paprika’s opened in 1999; however, the restaurant was originally called Elizabeth’s. We have eaten here multiple times over the 15+ years that it has been in business.

Located in a mixed-use residential and commercial building on Main Street in Hellertown, before you reach what was once the Hellertown movie theatre and the former high school (which is now an assisted living facility), this small restaurant has a diner-like atmosphere. The no-frills décor includes Formica booths and tables, decorative plates on the walls, faux plants hanging from the ceiling and on the wall that divides the two sections of the dining room, and a flat-screen TV in one corner (which is usually turned off). A few tables can be arranged to handle larger groups. The family that owns and operates the restaurant emigrated from Hungary in 1987, with the sons serving as hosts and waiters, and the parents cooking in the kitchen.

The restaurant offers authentic Hungarian/Eastern European cuisine, which is a rarity in many cities, and certainly in the Lehigh Valley. Paprika’s makes the best chicken paprikas that we have ever tasted, and we are compelled to order it each time that we dine there! You can choose either white meat (boneless) or dark meat (still on the bone), which is served atop home-made noodles called nokedli (similar to a German spätzle or a small dumpling) and then doused with a velvety paprika sour cream sauce. For dessert, their cottage cheese palacsinta (crepes) are tremendously good! Even though Paprika’s offer other flavors of crepes (apricot, strawberry, lekvar [plum/prune], raspberry, walnut, chocolate), we never order anything but the cottage cheese because it is so delicious (and because nostalgically, it reminds us of what our grandmother once made). If we could ever manage NOT to order the chicken paprika as an entree, we might choose the cabbage noodles, cottage cheese noodles, goulash, or stuffed cabbage rolls (halupkis) instead. Although we have never visited for lunch (only for dinner), the lunch menu features smaller portions of their most popular dinner entrees, along with a variety sandwiches (the sandwiches are not available at dinnertime). Dinner entrees are served with your choice of homemade chicken noodle soup or a small green salad; rolls and butter accompany the soup and salad. The restaurant is BYOB because it does not hold a liquor license. Service is business-like and perfunctory.

Try the delicious Hungarian comfort food at Paprika’s!