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Vienna Restaurants

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Vienna Restaurant Reviews

To appreciate how far the restaurant scene in Vienna has come in recent years, it helps to recall the way things used to be. Up until about 10 years ago, Austria was still dining in the 19th century. Most dinners were a mittel-europäisch sloshfest of Schweinebraten, Knödeln, and Kraut (pork, dumplings, and cabbage). No one denies that such courtly delights as Tafelspitz—the blush-pink boiled beef famed as Emperor Franz Josef's favorite dish—is delicious, but most traditional carb-loaded, nap-inducing meals left you stuck to your seat like a suction pad. If you consumed a plate-filling schnitzel and were able to eat anything after it, you were looked upon as a phenomenon—or an Austrian. A lighter, more nouvelle take on cuisine had difficulty making incursions because many meals were centered around Rehrücken (venison), served up in wine-cellar recipes of considerable—nay, medieval—antiquity. More »