The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Related Content

• Viral Visions: The Art of Infecting Perception

Zum Alten Fassl, a typical Viennese tavern-restaurant. Image from Zum Alten Fassl website.

Greetings from Vienna, one of the great food cities of the world. Americans may lump Austrian cuisine together with German cooking, but Vienna has its own distinctive cuisine, and it's a lot better and more interesting than German cooking. In part, this might be because the Austrians are Catholics, and the Germans - or at least the northern Germans - tend to be Protestants. The farther south you go in Germany, the more Catholic it is, and the better the cuisine. I have a whole theory about this, that I will have to save for another time.

photo by Kobako, used under Creative Commons license.

At any rate, there's a lot more to Viennese cuisine than Wienerschnitzel and Wiener wurstchen, (hot dogs, not to be confused with wiener dogs.) The classic Wienerschnitzel is made from veal, and is actually an adaptation of Italian veal scallopine, but most Wienerschnitzels in Vienna nowadays are made from pork, followed by chicken or turkey. A proper Wienerschnitzel is supposed to be pounded very thin, breaded in egg, flour and breadcrumbs, and then pan-fried. Done right, a Wienerschnitzel should be so un-greasy that you could sit down on it, if you were so inclined, and not get grease stains on your pants. Wienerschnitzel is about as ubiquitous in Viennese restaurants as hamburgers are on Twin Cities menus - even Turkish and Italian restaurants seem to feel the need to offer a schnitzel for less adventuresome diners. Another popular variation is the schnitzel semmel, a chicken or pork schnitzel on a bun, which has a strong resemblance to the classic Minnesota pork tenderloin sandwich.

Vienna is the former capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which made it a cultural crossroads for centuries - and besides, emperors usually like to eat well, and tend to do a lot of high-end entertaining. Today, Vienna is still a crossroads - you can hear dozens of languages on the streets, and find restaurants serving practically every cuisine in the world. Thanks to an influx of Turkish immigrant "guest workers" starting in the 60s, the most popular street food in Vienna is the doner kebab, the Turkish cousin of the gyros sandwich, sold on practically every street corner for about $5. Pizzerias are nearly as popular.

Last night, I took my son and his girlfriend out to Zum Alten Fassl, a typical Viennese beisl (tavern-restaurant), for some traditional Viennese cooking - he had Zwiebelrostbraten, roast beef with crispy fried onions, and I ordered one of the classics, Tafelspitz, tender boiled beef in beef broth, served with carrots, parsnips, applesauce and creamy horseradish sauce (it's a lot better than it sounds), all washed down with local Gosser beer.