Ah Vienna! The home of the legendary Wiener schnitzel and Sacher Torte. I dreamed about eating these delicacies in their home town, sadly I was disappointed on both counts.
I don’t quite know what I was expecting from my schnitter.
Maybe I should have gone for the original veal one I had Schwein (pork) instead. It was ok, crispy deep fried breading but it lacked a bit on flavour. It came with nothing except a lemon wedge and a shard of lettuce. For a side dish you had to go to the “salad bar” to get your ‘salad’. Austrian salad is different to Aussie – no lettuce to be seen! You had your choice of marinated beet root, carrot and cucumber/corn slathered in mayonnaise. There was also mayo covered asparagus and an odd ‘kartopfel salat’ (potato salad) which was boiled potato and red onion drowned in mayonnaise. It tasted ok – they really love their pickled foods here!
We had Sacher Torte at Hotel Sacher. They serve this Viennese specialty everywhere but the Hotel Sacher is renowned for it so why not try it there? They literally serve hundreds of slices of Sacher torte everyday and they have the service down to a maccas like standard. Slices are precut and then they pressed a button on what looks like a soft-serve ice cream machine which spits out a perfect blob of cream. Same withe the coffee – press a button and poof a crappy latte is served! The cake was nothing to write home about…dry and a bit bland. The best thing about it was the icing which was a dark chocolate ganache. I reckon I can make a better one at home. After all, I am ciocia crazy cakes!
Other meals we’ve had were apple strudel which is again very different to what we are used to. It was good but unfortunately It made me go tobogganing and I don’t mean sledding. I also had a meal of sausage and chips which was great! One of the two sausages was a cheese filled pork sausage wrapped in bacon – double schwein yumminess. That’s about all I can remember because we had a few meals at home and the rest were not memorable.
We did have a bier with every lunch. We tried a couple of Austrian varieties – Kaiser and Zipfer along with the Czech beer Stary Brno. My fave was Kaiser. John always got a 500ml glass – I’m saving my beer drinking for Poland where the beer is cheap.
We also tried some Austrian wein (wine) at little wine bars called Heurigers. Each Heuriger is a family run establishment that have often been running for hundreds of years. They are run by small wine makers that are only allowed to sell wine from their vineyard so their production is quite limited. Each Heuriger opens for a few weeks a year. Along with the wine you can order a variety of hot and cold food which is usually prepared by the wife of the wine maker. At a Heuriger you can generally expect to eat light meals of dips and breads, antipasti, salads, sliced to order deli meats and cheeses. Everything is sold by weight and it is not expensive. You are generally served by the children of the owners so it is a real family affair. Austria specialises in white wine which is predominantly what is drunk at the Heuriger. The wine was good and cheap and it was great to finally see Austrians socialising and smiling. They can even bring their dogs along. The Heurigers were a memorable experience.
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