(September 13th and 14th) Only three restaurants over the last part of my trip to Vienna - a gourmet, an ethnic hole in the wall, and a chain (I swear I didn't realize it before going there! but more on that in a few paragraphs...).
Unlike many instances in life, the highlight of this entry is the first restaurant from this period:
Porzellan. This place almost was perfect. Almost...but, for nouveau-Austrian cuisine, it was by far the best that I had on this entire trip.
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| Arugula Salad with Quinoa and Zucchini |
To start, an arugula salad (bathed in vinegar and oil) under quinoa and grilled zucchini. The zucchini, unfortunately (and those of you that remember my lament about Austrian food in the previous post probably already see this) was wrapped around sour cream (think really thick, almost cream-cheese style sour cream). Why? It was such a great concept except for the the fact that there was more sour cream inside those grilled zucchini wraps than I typically eat in an entire year. I kid you not! I had to painstakingly squeeze and scrape the sour cream out, otherwise it was too sickeningly fatty.
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| Duck with Mashed Sweet Potatoes |
The main course more than made up for the sour cream in the salad: duck with mashed sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes, something I always considered too sweet as a younger man to ever enjoy, were sweetened with apple sauce. Delicious by this 32 year old version of me. The duck would have been better had it been cooked like we see it in gourmet American restaurants - crispy exterior, succulent interior. Instead, as you can see, it was more like a cut of prime rib that had been roasted somehow...
That night I made my way to
Restaurant Lale, a Turkish restaurant on the outskirts of the pedestrian areas. Unless you're like me and have a masochistic streak large enough to suffer through reading a restaurant review in German, I wouldn't recommend clicking that link for a change. For some reason, I can't find a web-page for Restaurant Lale, though this, perhaps, gives more credence to me calling it a hole in the wall.
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| Hummus and...not Pita? |
First up was a plate of hummus, which, surprisingly, did not come with pita. Instead, I had the house bread to scoop it up with. The bottle of water that you see in the background, Romerquelle, is the Austrian version of Coca-Cola's Dasani. I don't think that this one comes from a tap in Atlanta, but you never know...
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| Sis Kabob. |
The main course was sis kabob. My notes have absolutely no comment about this dish, so I'll let you interpret that however you wish. The meat was nice, though not very much. Nothing exceptional, but evidently I'm still writing about it, so that must mean something?
My last dining experience in Vienna was a trip to
Vapiano. Unbeknownst to me, this is actually a chain that I've seen in several other European cities now. At the time, I couldn't have cared less. That morning I decided to do my long run since I knew that most of Saturday would be spent on trains. So, after 22 miles, I was pretty hungry and my body demanded food at the first possible chance. This led me to Vapiano's after the first pizzeria that I tried was inexplicably closed (it was the middle of the afternoon though, and most places seem to open for lunch, close, then open again for dinner). Overall, I should reserve my judgement of the food for a day where I'm not famished.
The setup at Vapiano's was pretty neat. They had RFID (radio frequency identification that is) cards that you took to each station throughout the restaurant (pizza, antipasta, salad, pasta, etc.), to load your order onto your account. Afterwards, you checkout by turning in your card and that's it. Once the novelty of this concept wore off, I realized it was just a modern version of a cafeteria. But still...modernity gives it some style points.
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| The diagonal angle makes it look cooler than it actually is! |
Above, fairly standard Caesar salad and a ham and mushroom pizza. It did the trick.
Most of the way through Vienna now...then we travel to Fussen!
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