The region has given Hungarian cuisine many a characteristic dishes.

As its inhabitants would say, "Somogy County's head is washed by the waters of the Balaton, its feet by the Dráva". Life here has traditionally been closely enriched by the varied landscape of hills, forests, marshes and waters. They have also greatly determined the diet. The very names of  some dishes, listed as though they figured on a menu, are telling: Somogy duck stew  with dumplings; sterc made from flour crumble and eaten with curdled milk, mutton stew with cottage cheese pasta,  also described as the dinner of 1848; apple stuffed with nuts, pike with vegetale ragout à la Mrs Révész, bacon rinds with mushroom and letcho, popularly known as "Kapos clothes stew".

Baranya County, inhabited alongside the Hungarians also by Germans, Croats, and Székelys, can also boast of quite a  few delicious specialities. As regards the ingredients and the modes of preparation, the list is practically unending. Fish, game, fruit and wine are of cardinal importance in all local cuisines. From Ormánság come the "bounded dumpling soup" (made with strudel pasta and stew base) and the "flax spinner's potatoes" (with smoked bacon, green pepper in paneake); from Pécs, the Tubes stuffed rumpsteak (wìth poultry liver, celery, mushroom, with red-wine and plum jarn sauce) and the "tipsy gnocchi" (with potatoes, onions and ewe-cheese); from the region of Zselicség we know the "Szenna pocketed meat" (pork slices stuffed with mushrooms, bacon and cheese fried in breadcrumbs). These dishes should be tasted to accompany the wines of the region.

The best known region in  Tolna County with a similarly varied  ethnic make-up is Sárköz, famous for its folk costumes. The villages of Őcsény, Decs, Sárpilis, Alsónyék and Báta have formed a specific closed community practically from the time of the Magyar Conquest. Only a hundred years ago the saying "half water, half fish" well described the riches of the waters in the region abounding in marshland, bogs and forests. No wonder that fish and game occupied an important piace in the diet. On feast days the menu included mutton, lamb, strudel, béles (soft sweet sponge cake layered with various flavours) and a variety of raised cakes.

Well worth tasting are the pickled fish, the lamb soup with tarragon, the steak with forest mushrooms and the back of venison with tarhonya, a special Hungarian egg barley, flavoured with bacon or the various handmade strudels.

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