New York Café

This guide to the New York Café in Budapest chases the legend that on opening night in 1894, a teenage writer named Ferenc Molnár hurled the coffeehouse's key into the Danube so its doors could never close. It traces why historians doubt that story, and follows the writers and editors who later made this room their real office, from editors running newspapers out of the upstairs gallery to poets eating from a shared bowl. Look for the small bronze diver set into the pavement outside, still reaching for that key.