The young, men, the better educated and Budapesters are more likely to go for a drink than older people, women, people from outside the capital and the less well educated, according to Studio Metropolitana's survey of the impact of cafe and restaurant terraces and open-air bars on the cityscape.

The location of bars is significant. Terraces in the centre have the big advantage of being well-located for impromptu visits. In other parts of the city this is far less likely to happen. But town-centre bars have to offer something special to seduce customers away from their neighbours.

As far as the cityscape is concerned, the decisive factor is whether a bar or restaurant is cordoned off from the surrounding neighbourhood or if it blends in. In the centre, blended spaces are the norm, although in certain areas, such as in the Buda hills, fenced-off open-air bars and restaurants are more common.

Incognito was the first bar on Liszt Ferenc tér. It opened in the early 90s. Since then the square has been a success story, attracting well-heeled foreign and Hungarian guests, Passion, a restaurant which has been on the square for three years, reports a four-fold increase in custom over the past year alone.

And of course there are the beer gardens that have opened in courtyard houses in the centre of town over recent years. These gardens are perhaps the most typically Budapest of the open-air offerings. Their popularity is linked to today's growing retro mania, because they are normally located in turn-of-the-century apartment buildings.

Their design reflects the Western squatting subculture, and that may explain their popularity amongst tourists and foreign students in Budapest. It's rare in the West to find an open-air bar in the middle of a residential area.

But the owner of the Szimpla garden says it is impossible to plan for the long term. The building that houses his beer garden has been slated for demolition by the district council.

The predecessors to today's open-air bars were the coffee houses of the past, which served the middle class of Budapest for more than three centuries. From the very beginning, coffee houses were a locale for open-ended discussion, games, entertainment, culinary delights, business deals, literature and often for politics as well. The coffee houses of Budapest largely followed the Viennese model from the end of the 19th century.

The coffee house was less an extension of the corso, as in Spanish, French or Italian cities, and more an essential accessory for a middle-class lifestyle. In Paris, chairs in the cafés faced and continue to face the street, in Budapest, people sat facing the table, with their backs to the corso. The coffee house has always been a metropolitan phenomenon.