Let’s go old school: After hyper-creative approaches to food with fancy names and chi-chi it was time for something real: Walter Bauer. And real it was. So real, that it even doesn’t have a homepage.
One of Vienna’s absolute classic restaurants for fine-dining is Walter Bauer’s small family business in a beautiful corner of the city center. From the outside you hardly will recognise it, except for the light sign:
Coming into the restaurant we were welcomed by Mr. Bauer, who was very friendly. The inside of the restaurant is old school and a little bit corny and dusty all over, but still in a strange way comfortable. The mixture of modern (Qlocktwo !!) and old oil paintings on the wall is weird, but very Viennese.
The table setting was nice butter and good bread, that was refilled without hesitation (a lot of times…).
The restaurant offers a quite small menue, there is one tasting menue (4 courses, 69€ without dessert) and some à la carte dishes. Mister Bauer took our orders and was very forthcoming, it was no problem to switch some courses. I went for the wine pairing (25€). Then the famous amuse bouche came along:
A Viennese all-time classic. And to be honest, I’ve hardly ever eaten such excellent Leberkäse. Very tender, meaty and beautiful clean taste. Then the menue started:
Crayfish is usually a watershed in restaurants: The product has to be top-quality or it tastes terrible. And this crayfish was AMAZING ! I’m quite sure, they have living crayfish and prepare them fresh. The meat was white, with perfect texture and a clean, tender aroma. It went nice with the herbal and green accents on the plate. I especially liked the black nut (glacé) though 🙂 The yellow roll, filled with a creamy cheese was also a nice addition. The different tastes gave the crayfish interesting aspects.
An amazing (and big) piece of fillet, very fresh and tender and prepared to the point. For my taste it was a bit too salty, but the others on the table found it ok. The pumpkin added a vegetal and nutty aroma, that corresponded well with the fish and it’s crispy skin. The sage gnocci were of excellent quality too.
I didn’t await very much of this dish, since I’m no particular fan of chicken. But this was a real surprise: The chicken meat was excellent, perfectly prepared with a nice bite, though being incredibly tender. It was VERY tasty, not at all with this annoying chicken-aftertaste. But the star here was the side-dish: Excellent homemade linguine with a dark chicken gravy, with morels and fresh peas. AMAZING (I’ve stolen the recipe and made this at home several times – perfect) !
Then there was meat. Old school meat: Perfectly medium, a big portion of tender and tasy lamb. I liked the mediterranean side dish with eggplant and barley, which combined rather dark flavours (slightly smoked eggplant) with fresh, green aromas of wood-garlic and firm to the bite barley.
For dessert again a Viennese Classic: Buchteln with passion fruit and nougat (14€). We ate there shortly before easter, I still ask myself if the passion fruit was intended as a pun…. Anyway: The Buchteln were extremely fluffy. But the star was the nougat sauce – OH MY GOD. Thick, massive, liquid nougat. And they left the can on the table 🙂
As a farewell gift we were presented some pralinés which were very nice too (we shouldn’t have eaten them anyway, the were just the last drop into the full barrel…). For the wine pairing: This was kind of a disappointment, most wines were from 2012 – so not even half a year old and very unbalanced in structure and taste. Next time I would order a bottle from the excellent wine menue.
It was a really beautiful evening in a restaurant with character and profile. Everything looks really old school here – but what you get is excellent, honest kitchen on a very high level. Excellent products, presented in an interesting form and in honest portion sizes. Definetely a place to go to !
