What to Eat in Vienna: Austrian Dishes Worth Ordering

Wondering what to eat in Vienna? Start with the dishes the city made its own. Vienna has a whole style of cooking named after it, Wiener Küche, Viennese cuisine. It grew up in the capital of a large empire, borrowing from Bohemia, Hungary, Italy and beyond and making those ideas its own.

Here are the Austrian dishes worth ordering at least once. All of them are on our menu.

What to eat in Vienna first: the two you’ve heard of

Wiener Schnitzel. A thin slice of veal, breaded and fried until golden, traditionally served with potato salad. In Austria the name means veal; the pork version is called ‘Wiener Art’, Viennese style. We serve both: a veal Wiener Schnitzel with potato salad and lingonberries, and the Pork schnitzel ‘Viennese style’ with potato salad. There’s more on telling them apart in our schnitzel guide.

Tafelspitz. Beef simmered slowly with root vegetables, served with its own broth, apple and horseradish sauce (Apfelkren) and chive sauce. The Viennese start with the broth and then move on to the meat. Ours is the Original Tafelspitz (boiled beef) ‘Classic’, and we’ve written a short guide to eating it.

Goulash, onions and roast pork

Goulash. Goulash came to Vienna from Hungary, and the city made its own version: beef braised slowly with plenty of onions and paprika until the sauce is thick and dark. Ours is Beef goulash with a bread dumpling. The dumpling is a Serviettenknödel, bread dough rolled up and cooked in a cloth (the name means ‘napkin dumpling’), then sliced. For something lighter, there’s Goulash soup.

Zwiebelrostbraten. A slice of beef, fried and heaped with crispy onions: a classic of the traditional Viennese inn. On our menu it’s the Viennese Zwiebelrostbraten (roast beef with onions) with fried potatoes, gherkins and crispy onions.

Schweinsbraten. Roast pork, the kind of dish Austrians associate with a long Sunday lunch. Ours comes as Roast pork with a bread dumpling and cabbage with bacon.

Soups the Viennese actually order

Viennese meals often start with soup, and the most common is clear beef broth, Rindsuppe, with something in it.

On our menu that means Beef broth with homemade pancake strips (Frittaten), thin pancakes cut into ribbons, or Beef broth with a homemade liver dumpling. For something thicker, try the Traditional Viennese potato soup.

Sweet Austrian dishes: strudel, Sachertorte and Kaiserschmarrn

Vienna takes its sweet dishes as seriously as its main courses. Three to know:

• Apfelstrudel. Apples wrapped in very thin, stretched pastry. The saying goes that proper strudel dough should be thin enough to read a newspaper through. Ours is the Viennese apple strudel, with whipped cream or with vanilla ice cream.
• Sachertorte. Vienna’s famous chocolate cake, traditionally with a layer of apricot jam under a dark chocolate glaze. We serve Sachertorte with whipped cream.
• Kaiserschmarrn. A thick, fluffy pancake torn into pieces and dusted with icing sugar, named, so the story goes, after the emperor. On our menu it’s the Viennese Kaiserschmarren ‘Franz Joseph’ with plum compote.

Also worth knowing: Mohr im Hemd, a chocolate pudding, and ice-cream dumplings with apricot or with plum.

Where to eat in Vienna, and the menu words that help

The old town, the first district, is where many visitors spend their first day, and it’s full of places serving Viennese classics. Ours is the cellar restaurant at Rotenturmstraße 12, a few minutes’ walk from St Stephen’s Cathedral.

Wherever you eat, a few Austrian words make the menu easier:

• Erdäpfel: potatoes (literally ‘earth apples’)
• Schlagobers: whipped cream
• Kren: horseradish
• Paradeiser: tomatoes
• Knödel: dumpling
• Zwetschken: plums
• gebacken: breaded and fried, not ‘baked’
• Beisl: a traditional, unpretentious Viennese inn

If someone in your group doesn’t eat meat, look out for the Breaded Emmental cheese with lingonberries. There’s fish too, such as the Pan-fried pike-perch fillet with parsley potatoes and grilled vegetables. Pike-perch, Zander in German, is a freshwater fish much loved in Central Europe.

Have a look at the full menu and choose before you come.