Vienna Food Guide

Vienna is awesome place for food in particular pastries and meaty meals. There are all sorts of pastries to try. It felt like I just died and went to cake heaven. 


Bought this off a small bakery. Quite tasty. Recommended by the cashier.


High-tech coffee machine found at a convenient store.


Didn’t try this but the whole shop was selling this.


Awesome!

Although coffee culture is big in Vienna, I didn’t like their coffee. I still prefer Melbourne styled coffee.

As mentioned before, food in Vienna is not cheap. Portion is not extremely big but one dish should suffice to feed two Asians.

Figlmuller

A recommended restaurant with over 100 years of history. It was tough to get a place for dinner as it was full. Fortunately, they have an outlet few metres away which had plenty of seats.

Snitzel is highly recommended here. The restaurant claims to be the first to come out with a large snitzel using the best pork and cuts. Snitzel is basically boneless meat, thinned, coated with flour, beaten eggs and bread crumbs, and then fried.

We also had veal goolash (some sort of stew) with butter dumplings.

They were all very nice!

Website: http://www.figlmueller.at/

Sacher Cafe

This cafe claims to be the origin of Sacher-Torte cake, a chocolate cake covered with a layer of chocolate and a thin spread of jam. Whipped cream is served on the side.

Sacher started off as a cafe but eventually grew into a hotel. The recipe for the cake is said to be 180 years old and has never changed since then . It’s interesting to have a cake ate by people 180 years ago.

Although its famous in Vienna, I’m not a big fan of it as it is a little bit dry. But it’s something one should try when in Vienna.


We also had sausages and Sacher toast. They were nice.

To get there, stop at Karplatz station. There are a few exits hence take Exit A  – Kartner StraBe. This exit is the nearest to the cafe which is behind the Vienna Opera House.

Website: http://www.sacher.com/sacher-cafes/

Cafe Diglask

Another famous restaurant. It was recommended by our tour guide while passing by the place.

We had typical Viennese breakfast and their apple strudel. The latter was good.


Coffee was so-so.


I was extremely interested with this pink coloured cake. But when I was told that it was made from marzipan, I want to put this cake on a plate and flung it out from the restaurant.

We bought some cakes back to London for Sow. But Sow said the cakes were not flight proof. The cakes looked like it rolled down the stairs when it got to London.

Website: Google+

Demel
Founded in 1786, Demel is a famous pastry shop and chocolatier. This is apparently the birthplace of Sacher Torte cakes.

We had their famous Anna Torte and Sacher Torte cakes. The former was good but the latter was just so-so to me. It was pretty dry. I guess I’m not a fan of Sacher Torte.

I ordered a Melange (small espresso with milk and foam). I didn’t like it too.

Website: http://www.demel.at/

Schonbrunn Palace @ Vienna, Austria

We also visited Schonbrunn Palace. It is a place to visit if one likes massive imperial gardens – very nice scenery and filled with joggers. If I had my jogging shoes on, I would definitely jog around the palace. We wandered around the garden and took some pictures. We wandered around the garden and took some pictures. We didn’t enter the palace as it was closed.

I wonder when would our Government open our old palace at Jalan Istana to the public. It looks like a pleasant place for public activities. I am told that there is a stream inside the compound of our old palace.

Vienna, Austria 2013

As part of our Europe trip, we stopped by Vienna, Austria and Bratislava, Slovakia. We spent most of our time in Vienna and only half a day in Bratislava.

I like Vienna. It’s spacious and clean. The buildings and architecture are interesting.

The train system is smooth and simple. It’s also linked to the tram system. However, getting around can be difficult as the names of the places are long. If you look at the map, you probably won’t be able to find a place as it is too comprehensive.


DA FAK

The only drawback of this place is that it is very expensive. A meal for two can costs 30 Euro. Tipping is required. 10% of the bill is sufficient.


Shelves made of paper boxes! Each drawer has a bag.

A day trip train costs me 7 Euro but the good thing is that they usually do not check your tickets and there are no barriers to the train stations. It reminds me of Berlin’s train stations. 

We stayed in a nice apartment nearby Meidling HauptstraBe station. It looks plain from outside but the apartment was beautiful!

We found the place through AirBnB. Our host doesn’t live in the apartment thus we got the whole place for ourselves. She installed a small locker on the door. She kept the key to the door inside. In order to open the locker, we would need a passcode and this was given by our host.

Our host had everything ready for us. She had power plug converters to a written guide (of places to visit and eat) of the city by her!


View of the canal outside our place. It was so hot that some ladies soaked themselves in the canal. And they got to the front page from doing that.

Free WiFi is abundant in Vienna city centre. You can get them at the major train stations or restaurants provided by one company called Freewave.at.


St. Stephen’s Cathedral. One of the most prominent landmarks in Vienna. Loads of shopping arcades, restaurants and cafes surrounding the cathedral.

We didn’t do much research on the places to visit. Since we don’t have much time, we took the Old Timer city tour around Vienna. It’s a one hour on an open roof truck (hot hot hot!) mostly around the older part of Vienna. We got to see many popular tourist spots (many statutes too!). But we could only see those spots from afar as the truck doesn’t stop.


Old Timer!


I initially thought this place is a hotel but later found out it is not.

We even pass by a art school which Adolf Hitler tried to enroll when he was younger but got rejected. One interesting fact about Adolf Hitler is that he was an Austrian and wanted to be a painter.


Statue of a man on the roof. Can’t seem to find information about this statue. It has something to do with commemorating the first suicide after a stock market crashed. Anyone knows?

My favourite story about Vienna is how coffee was introduced to Vienna after the Battle of Vienna. After the Ottoman Empire retreated from Vienna, bags of coffee were found in the abandoned Ottoman encampment. Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki took these bags of coffee and opened a cafe. However, to be frank, I didn’t like Viennese coffee. I prefer the dark and strong Melbourne-style coffee.

We were in Vienna for 4 days. It was sufficient for us to see the main tourist attractions in the city. We returned to London after our Austria trip.

More later!