Kitchen Scraps: Austrian Edition

My wife, Melissa, has relatives in Salzburg, so we try to visit every year or two. This year, it has been incredibly hot, close to 100 degrees most days, but Salzburg and Vienna are still great food destinations.

We stay at a private farm just outside of town. (One of the owners knew the Von Trapp family back in the day and the true story is nothing like the movie).

Here are a few of the places that we like eat and drink.

This used to be a small breakfast spot a few blocks outside of the center of the Altstadt but, a few years ago, it moved into a more central location not far from where the Festspiele (the annual music festival) takes place. One of my favorite specialties, a millet oatmeal with fruit and nuts, is no longer on the menu, but they still offer the Tutti Frutti—excellent plain yogurt with fruit, a dash of tahini, and a form of not-sweet praline. They also have lots of coffee choices and egg dishes served mostly with brioche. Lovely place to start the day, although they do not open until 9 a.m.

Only open Thursday mornings, this is the best market in town, with loads of eierschwammerl (chanterelles), marillen (apricots), meats and sausages (plus super thinly sliced sheets of schinken—ham), breads and rolls, sweet pastries, tons of flowers, honey, jam, etc. (The market is on the other side of the river from the Altstadt, in a parking lot opposite the Mirabell gardens.)

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This used to be a very traditional spot until a few years ago when they built a large outdoor patio with a more modern menu. However, it is a nice place to sit, not far from the Festspiele. The gemischter salat is excellent (has lettuce plus Austrian potato salad and a cucumber salad) as is the Wiener schnitzel. Don’t worry about looking like a tourist with the schnitzel—it is the best version around.

A tiny but outstanding wine and liquor store near the end of Getreidegasse. Order a white wine spritzer with a shot of holunderbluten (elderflower) schnapps. Elderflower is one of my favorite flavors—it is also used as a non-alcoholic flavoring with sparkling water, the perfect drink on a hot day. You can grab your spritzer and stand outside to drink it; they even provide a small shelf to hold your drink. Best visited in the early evening when Getreidegasse is a bit less crowded and things start to cool down.

Black bread is one of the specialties here and it is best purchased at Josef Brot, around the corner from Sporer. They also sell great small sandwiches with ham and cheese or just cheese. They add some grated horseradish to the schinken (ham) sandwiches, which makes them spicy.

Dishes to Try: Other than the wienerschnitzel, there are dumplings filled with crispy pork belly (grammelknødel), tafelspitz (boiled beef with vegetables and horseradish), which sounds awful but is great, and, for dessert, palatschinken, which are crepes usually filled with apricot jam. Summer is the season for eierschwammerl and they are all over the menus, from a mushroom goulash to soup to appetizers.

Had the best goulash of my life there, with two dumplings that were super light. The goulash sauce was rich, dark, silky and divine. Cannot recommend this dish too highly.

Cool concept. The bakers are mostly grandmothers who come is for 5-hour shifts and cook old-school desserts. Their sachertorte is way better than what you find at the Sacher Hotel, the latter being, in my opinion from a visit years ago, not that fresh. The indoor part of the café looks a bit like a grandmother’s living room with chintz-style sofas and lots of photos on the walls. Cute, but the desserts are terrific.

We made buchteln for an upcoming episode of Milk Street TV; it’s a sweet yeast dumpling (looks more like a hot cross bun to me) filled with a thick plum jam and served with a crème anglaise.

This is perhaps the coolest old café in Vienna. The baker made an apricot cake which starts with a layer of biscuit dough. You cut off thin pieces from a big square of dough, place it on a baking sheet and bake until done. Cover with a creamy sweet filling and bake until that filling sets. Top with sliced apricots glazed with apricot jam. Highly recommend this café if you want to get a feel for old Vienna.

We also went to a cooking school where we made topfennockerl, cream cheese dumplings (made from an Austrian farmer’s cheese called topfen) plus breadcrumbs and egg, covered with toasted breadcrumbs, simmered in water and served with a plum coulis.