A Café Tour of Vienna
Sitting and Drinking and Doing Not Much of Anything
Vienna is known for its café culture, and I had always romanticized wasting my time throughout a city with endless good coffeeshops, reading, writing, drinking coffee, eating, people-watching, and just chatting idly. And now here we are at last.
With ample time to kill here and lots of writing to be done, Ali’s made a wonderful point to take me to a whole bunch of cafes here. A lot of them are ones she’s been going to for most of her teenaged years and college life, plus some other local necessities.
Here’s a walkthrough of the cafes I’ve been to so far, plus a few other highlights:
Café Savoy
Where: Linke Wienzeile 36, 6th District
The Café Savoy is a classically-styled Viennese café, with ornate decoration, comfortable booths, an opening date that goes back to 1896, and excellent coffee. It’s right near the Naschmarkt, an open-air market packed with good sweets and cheap falafel. Ali had a latte macchiato; I opted for a Pharisäer, which is a coffee mixed with rum and topped with whipped cream.
It was the best whipped cream I’ve ever tasted, probably because it was not sprayed from a tube like I would have done at the IHOP I worked at in high school. The mixture of rum and coffee was a nice pick-me-up for an overcast afternoon. We did not get any food because we had too much falafel beforehand, but the menu did look nice and not prohibitively expensive for a lunch. The whole place had a laid-back atmosphere despite the ritzy-looking interior, so it was a good place to chat, write some, and relax. I was finishing up this newsletter on my laptop while we were here, and people were kind of looking at me funny for working and not just vibing, which is fair.
Turm Café
Where: Donauturmplatz 1, 20th District
This cafe was the first I went to on this trip, located at the top of the Donauturm, which is a large tower next to the Donau (Danube) River. The café and restaurant at the top slowly pivots in a circle (similar to how Atlanta’s Sundial used to) which gives you continually great views of the city and surrounding areas.
We had the apfel-strudel and split a kaffee mélange, which is like a Viennese cappuccino — a mild coffee with a half cup of cream (oat milk in my case) and milk foam on top. It made for a great first day in Vienna, and the tower’s views were worth the money.
Café Ritter Ottakring
Where: Ottakringer Str. 117, 16th District
This is a nice spot, old-school with art nouveau stylings, but filled with locals eating after work, getting drunk, and just hanging out, which gives it a different feel than some of the other regal-looking cafes in Vienna. But even more interesting than that is what got us to go there in the first place.
Ali’s mom invited us to join her and her boyfriend to see what she described as “a live murder mystery” at a café. I thought that sounded fun, since I pictured actors in some kind of dinner-performance, so even if I couldn’t understand everything, I’d be able to enjoy the physicality of the show.
But the actual event got lost in translation. It was a live reading of a murder mystery novel by a local comedian, not a show like I was thinking. Nope, very different.
Ali tried to explain that to me, but I had already gotten it in my head that that sounded fun, so I still said we should go, much to her surprise.
As you would expect if you know me personally, my German is not very good at the moment.
I did not study it in school ever, only learning through Duolingo, travelling in the past year to a couple German-speaking countries, Yiddish cross-over words I remember from my childhood, and pestering Ali. I order successfully in a bar or restaurant, but still, when speaking I find myself literally incapable of making certain necessary sounds for the language. It’s like when the professor character in Don DeLillo’s White Noise needs his German tutor to literally move his tongue for him to get the words out correctly. And the amount of false cognates between German and English is just goddamn endless…
So that’s all to say that my comprehension is quite limited. And even in cases where I can understand it, that tends to only be when people are speaking clear German without much of a dialect.
In this case, I knew I was fucked as soon as I saw the comedian go up to prep for the show. He was a middle-aged guy named Leo Lukas, wearing a vest over a dress shirt and a funny hat. He had a soul patch. So yeah, he looked like every middle-aged comedian on a local show I’d ever seen advertised, in any country, as if these guys have a worldwide uniform. I also knew from that look he’d probably be speaking rapidly and with an intentionally thick dialect, because that’s what would happen in America or Ireland too with one of these kind of guys.
And yes, that was indeed the case. This man read about four chapters of his comedic murder mystery book to us over the course of an evening, only stopping to play a small steel drum for some reason. I understood absolutely nothing. Spectacularly nothing. I did not even catch that the story involved clowns. The word clown is pretty much the same in German as in English, so that tells you just how much trouble I had understanding this guy.
But hey, I had a great time regardless. His delivery was p good, to be honest, and Ali consistently bought me beers, so I enjoyed the show without understanding virtually anything except for like, “ich” and “arbeit" and simple shit like that. But it was probably good for my German comprehension in the long run, and writing this at a later date I have noticed some improvement.
Ali and I split a plate of krautfleckerl (noodles with sauerkraut), which was a nice food I’d never had before, and I got drunk off three Ottakringer beers, all of which were quite nice, especially the dark one.
Liebling
Where: Zollergasse 6, 7th District
We met some of Ali’s uni friends during an evening here, and I had quite a bit of everything from their menu: nachos, a small glass of red house wine, a negroni (not with prosecco in it), a berry pastry, and a beer. Everything was quite cheap compared to what I knew we’d be facing soon in Dublin, so I was content to spend that small bit and get a lot of stuff.
The place itself was very lively but comfortable, with plenty of seating and table space inside and out. To my recently-Atlanta-centered brain, it felt like somewhere out of EAV to me: posters for local shows and art events everywhere, a heavily graffitied restroom, and some oddball furniture choices sticking out of corners and walls. The staff played some decent electronic music I didn't recognize at all, including a bit of German rap that didn't suck for once.
Café Schopenhauer
Where: Staudgasse 1, 18th District
This was perhaps my favorite spot to get a coffee so far, and it’s where I camped out to write this newsletter originally. The menu is themed after the supposed habits of various famous philosophers, most notably the Simone de Beauvoir, which is just an espresso and a cigarette.
Ali and I opted for Plato’s breakfast, which was for some reason was a very tasty piece toast with avocado, egg, and a salad. We also split a cappuccino and a soda himmbeere, which is a cheap, refreshing raspberry soda that’s sold almost everywhere in the city to give students a non-alcoholic cheap choice.
The shop also is a bookstore, stocked of course with philosophy books, but also a wide variety of recent fiction and popular non-fiction material published in German. It’s great place to read with cozy seating and great coffee. They also have WIFI, which not every café has. I found it to be a friendly, warm spot named after a philosopher who the little bit I know about would suggest quite the opposite.
Reformhaus Regenbogen
Where: Garnisongasse 12, 9th District
This place is not a café but a reformhaus, which is like a health food or organic product store in the U.S. However, they also serve some of the best vegetarian and vegan food I’ve ever had, with generous portions and really good prices. It’s quite popular with students and locals, and everyone working there was incredibly friendly and kind. It felt like a vital location for community, and I’m sure having such affordable healthy food in the area has kept more than one person alive, literally.
For the lovely to-go meals, you just bring your own container and pick out what you want from a menu, but there’s also a few outdoor seats and a small, comfortable counter to eat at, wrapped around the kitchen area. It felt like being inside someone’s home, warm and instantly comforting.
My girlfriend knows the owner personally and has been going there for as long as she’s been in Vienna, and everyone I met involved in the place was wonderful. I ate multiple meals from this place during my stay in Vienna, all wonderful, but a highlight is certainly the schoko-banana cake, which is one of the best desserts I’ve ever had, covered in a perfect layer of chocolate and filled with actual bananas, turned somehow into like a layer of sweet cream.
Café Europa
Where: Zollergasse 8, 7th District
This is a spacious café located right near Liebling. Lots of good R&B and ‘90s hip-hop playing with a gorgeous interior design.
Their coffee was bit expensive, but phenomenally good. Ali and I split a cappuccino, and even from just that alone, they serve the best-tasting coffee I’ve had here so far.
Backerei Oher Moshe
Where: Lilienbrunngasse 18, 2nd District
This spot is kosher bakery and café in the 2nd district, located across from a yeshiva in the most predominantly Jewish district of Vienna. We stopped in fittingly after touring the only temple in Vienna that the Nazis didn’t destroy, which I’ll discuss in a whole other post at some point. Had a lovely brunch here: the Fluffy Lachs, which was salmon on a roll with avocado and two hard boiled eggs on top, a cappuccino, and the last couple of rugelach they had for that day.
phil
Where: Gumpendorfer Str. 10 - 12, 6th District
We only had a soda himbeere and an espresso here, but it was easily the comfiest café I've been to. The place is filled with super comfortable couches and a multi-section book store including books on art, comics, philosophy, and recent global hits published in German, plus a music shop somewhere in there I didn’t get a chance to check out.
The espresso was good and came with a little chocolate-coated almond to enjoy too. I almost fell asleep on one of those couches while we waited for a local ice cream shop to open, hence why I ordered the espresso in the first place.
Pickwick's Café
Where: Marc-Aurel-Straße 10-12, 10th District
What an interesting place. Lots of movie paraphernalia scattered around a myriad assortment of used English-language books and an atmosphere reminiscent of the pubs that dot Ireland and the UK.
The book selection seems essentially to be every English language book they had on hand, plus some German translations of English-language authors such as Saul Bellow and a couple British fantasy authors I didn't recognize. This selection meant you had guides from 2002 about using PERL next to Elmore Leonard hardbacks, which made for lovely decor amidst whisky bottles and movie posters. The coffee was not the best from our mini-tour, but it's really more the kind of place to get a beer at anyway. They're open late, and we were there at 2 p.m., but when we went to that same area for some bars on the weekend, I peeked over and saw the place was packed.
Café Central
Where: Herrengasse 14, 1st District
This café was the first I ever went to in Vienna, and it was last winter actually while visiting with some grad school friends. I’m mostly mentioning it again just in case anyone visiting decides to try it out, which is likely since it’s popular with tourists: get a reservation in advance! It doesn’t cost you anything, and it saves you from standing in a formidable line.
The interior is regal, with imagery of Sisi, Franz Josef, and probably several other Hapsburgs I didn’t recognize amidst art nouveau architecture. The food was really good from what I remember, and though the place was expensive, I just ate a heavy snack before to shoot for just a light meal. Which, if I remember correctly, was a nice soup and salad, a kaffee Verlängerter, and my group split a couple cakes for after the meal. I maybe got away with just spending 15 euros or so before tip, which I’d say was worth for it the experience alone.
Swing Kitchen
Where: Multiple locations
Not a café by any means, but they have some wonderful vegan fast food that I liked enough to write about it. So, here we are, with a fast-casual spot mentioned immediately after the Café Central.
Their burger is probably my favorite meat alternative so far, and the vegan schnitzel tastes great too, with some creative salad options on top as well. I also liked the well-salted, thick-cut fries, and their refill-friendly soda selection was a nice treat for my extremely American palette. It’s definitely shooting to be an American-style fast-casual place, and they nailed it, but without any of the bad parts somehow.
Now that I’ve gotten to see if the romanticized, rose-colored view I had of café culture would hold up in reality a few times, I’m happy to report: yes, yes, it certainly does.
obsessed with this; obsessed w cafes! Hopefully will get to Vienna one day to try all of these recommendations.
ps- super sad I didn't get to meet Ali during your visit to ATL... next time.