I had been wanting to visit Vienna ever since I read a newspaper article about it 2 or 3 years ago. I had already been to Vienna when I was a little kid, but who honestly remembers anything from those trips your parents took you on when you were little?
So last month we finally headed off to Vienna for a couple of days. In preparation for the trip I read up on restaurants and, most importantly, coffee houses. Below are my favorite.
First stop on the trip: Demel. In 2006 I first visited Demel in Salzburg and loved it. The hot chocolate was so rich and the whipped cream that topped it so dense and delicious. Due to the summer weather the hot chocolate would not be an option this time, so I had to try something else. I started off with the house-made sausages served with mustard and horseradish (called "Kren" in Austria--the Austrians love their horseradish). Then I moved on to the Annatorte, which is a layer cake filled with truffle cream with a hint of orange liquor and enrobed in chocolate nougat. This cake was very good, but the nougat perhaps a little too much. Along with the Annatorte I tried the Einspänner, which is a double espresso topped with loads of whipped cream. It was very good and we never found an Einspänner at any other coffee house that tasted as good as Demel's. Because of this and the many good sweets Demel has to offer we ended up going to Demel several times. On one occassion I got the Fächertorte (Fächer is German for fan). It's a cake that consists of four layers: poppyseed, walnut, apple and plum. I got the cake to go and it weighed a ton (after eating it I also felt like a ton!). It's worth trying but I don't think it would ever be my favorite as there are too many different flavors in it.
On our first evening we checked out the restaurant Glacis Beisl. I had read about it in my guidebook and since it was near our hotel we decided to give it a try. I had chanterelle goulash with dumplings (in German: Eierschwammerlgulasch mit Serviettenknödel). The goulash wasn't exactly what I expected. It was more goulash-like than I thought it would be, meaning it had the same spices and seasonings (lots of paprika) as regular (meat-containing) goulash and for some reason I expected a milder, creamier version, but it was very good nontheless. We ended up going there again on our last night. That night I had fried chicken salad (in German: Backhendlsalat), which was salad with pieces of fried chicken on top. At first I thought, what a strange combination, but it turned out to be quite good. The salad consisted of lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes and yummy purple broad beans, and was topped with dressing that had pumpkin seed oil in it, a traditional Austrian staple.
Of course we had to make a trip to Hotel Sacher to try the original Sachertorte. As with many foods labelled "original" there is some controversy as to who actually makes the original Sachertorte, but I won't go into that. Fact is, the Sachertorte at Hotel Sacher tastes very, very good!
In that one article on Vienna that I read a couple of years ago there was mention of the restaurantÖsterreicher im MAK. The review was quite good so we went there for dinner one of the nights. Although there were many delicious things on the menu we both decided that we should try the Wiener Schnitzel (Wiener means Viennese in German; Schnitzel is breaded meat--in this case breaded veal) as we hadn't yet had one. It was accompanied by a salad made of lamb's lettuce and potatoes. Both Schnitzel and salad were very tasty. Often Schnitzel is made with meat that eventually turns into chewing gum and meat-flavored chewing gum is not exactly my favorite... But this meat was tender and juicy and the breading had a perfect crispiness and was not too greasy. Fortunately the plate was big enough to cover most of the placemat which was a picture of a nipple, not the most appetizing thing to be looking at when waiting for food (the MAK is the Museum of Applied Arts, so the placemat can be traced back to some art project).
On our last day I just had to go to Fruth, a patisserie near the Naschmarkt, Vienna's most famous outdoor market. We had passed Fruth on our way to Schloss Belvedere on a previous day and judging by the display of sweets in the window I knew the place had to be good. The shop is very cute inside with additional goodies in the cabinets. Unfortunately, there is no place to sit down so you either have to get something to go or stand at the little counter on the side of the shop, which is what we ended up doing. It was so hard to decide what to get but I finally decided on the coconut raspberry muffin as it was something I had never had before. It tasted quite good and you could tell that the ingredients were of high quality, but maybe the muffin should have sat out at room temp for a little bit first as it was on the cool side. Next time I will definitely get something with chocolate!
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