I have just discovered that there is a DIY restaurant in Vienna. That’s right — you pay for the privilege of cooking your own meal. I just wonder who gets to do the dishes …
If you are ever in Rome near the Termini train station and need a bite to eat, you could do worse than Cucina da Luciano on the corner of Via Giovanni Amendola and Via Danieli Manin. All the signs are in Italian (Orari Mar – Dom) but the staff speak English. The pasta is al dente and the drinkable house wine costs EUR 2 for a quarter of a liter. A nice experience on a Saturday, when some Italians also seemed to be enjoying a leisurely lunch.
My comment: For my German (Viennese)-speaking readers. Just a quick note for the others: the “erl” at the end of a word forms the diminutive thereby making each amount sound harmless or at least more harmless than it otherwise would. You’ll notice there is no “erl” on the last one. That’s because it’s “a double”–in other words a two-liter bottle of (usually very acidic and unpleasant) wine.
Yes, you read that correctly. As of yesterday our restaurants are open and people are allowed to eat out. There are, of course, certain restrictions, but they don’t seem that tough.
What is really interesting and, I feel, particularly Viennese is that the city of Vienna is issuing gift certificates to each household for use in a restaurant. EUR 25 for single households and EUR 50 for families. Gives new meaning to the expression “Put your money where your mouth is,” doesn’t it?
It’s been a while since I’ve written about Vanillekipferln. For anyone who has not taken my word for how important Vanillekipferln are to the Viennese at Christmas let me quote a statistic from the Kurier: 71% of Austrians think of Vanillekipferln when they think of Christmas cookies. In Vienna I suspect that percentage is even higher. (I don’t have a sense that Vanillekipferln are quite as central to Christmas in Tirol and Vorarlberg, for example.) đ
In any case, Merry Christmas to all my readers who celebrate Christmas!
According to this, Emperor Josef II decreed that all plays had to have a happy ending. This meant (pretty major, if you ask me) re-writes for plays like “Romeo and Juliet” and “Hamlet”. These happy endings became known in the German speaking world as “Viennese endings”. Apparently, Apfelstrudel and other delicacies weren’t enough to keep the population happy. đ
I was walking home from the supermarket on this Friday evening. In front of me was what I took to be a little family group–mother on the left, a tow-headed boy about six years old in the middle, and father on the right. The boy was licking with great enthusiasm a large and delicious-looking ice cream cone. His mother watched with pride and pleasure and said, “Das erste Eis heuer?” (“First ice cream of the year?”)
The German-language students among you may think “‘Heuer’? What’s ‘heuer’?” “Heuer” is Austrian dialect for “dieses Jahr” or “this year”. That tiny scene made me happy–that I have learned the language to the level where I know that immediately and that I live in a country that still respects the seasons (at least in some things). It is possible to get ice cream at the supermarket in winter, but if you want ice cream parlor ice cream you have to wait. The traditional places are closed from October to March. (They used to be turned into fur coat stores in the winter, but now, it seems, even the Viennese are not buying enough fur coats to keep them in business.)
You can imagine under these circumstances that the first ice cream of the year becomes an event.
“Heringschmaus” (one contributor to the online dictionary at leo.org suggested “herring delight” as a translation) is a traditional feast on Ash Wednesday. Now, if that sounds contradictory to you, then you are not alone. I come from the Protestant tradition, where there was certainly no feasting on Ash Wednesday. It was a day of great solemnity and deprivation, even though when I was a child we didn’t celebrate anything like Carnival so had nothing to recover from or make up for.
In the Austrian context–one of moderation in all things, even moderation–Heringschmaus makes sense, though. It goes along with the dearly held belief, in the meantime supported in some ways by medical studies, that eating “sour” things like pickles helps alleviate the symptoms of a (Mardi Gras) hangover. (The herring in this case is pickled and is eaten with pickled vegetables like beets and cabbage.) It also complies with the Catholic idea that eating fish is somehow penance (no meat).
What to do this year when Ash Wednesday coincides with Valentine’s Day? The Kurier is suggesting Heringschmaus by candlelight. Just thought I’d pass that tip along. đ
Spring arrived in Vienna suddenly the end of last week, after an unusually cold and snowy winter. The sun had barely been out for a dayâand the snow was not entirely goneâwhen my friend Petra started talking about BĂ€rlauch. Petra and I may not be the most skilled or dedicated foragers in the Vienna Woods, but we do like the tender, bright green shoots of this form of wild garlic (botanical name: Allium ursinum) commonly found in and around Vienna.
What is it about BĂ€rlauch that brings out the residents of Vienna in great numbers? It is certainly easy plunder. It grows profusely and the pungent, completely distinctive scent leads you right to it. It is also versatile. Menus in Vienna feature cream of BĂ€rlauch soup, BĂ€rlauch risotto, BĂ€rlauch pesto, BĂ€rlauch sauce, BĂ€rlauch dumplings, and so on. (Imagine Bubba talking about shrimp in âForrest Gumpâ and you wonât be far off). And it truly is a sign that spring has arrived. It appears early and grows quickly, and gives an extra purposeâif one needs itâto those early spring walks, preferably in the Pötzleinsdorfer Schlosspark or Lainzer Tiergarten (no dogs). It seems to have an enormous attraction for many demographic groups, but not all.
For older Viennese the gathering of their own food in general and particularly the picking of BĂ€rlauchâthe smell is powerfully evocativeâhas grim associations and they usually donât participate actively. They remember too vividly the years during and just after the Second World War when BĂ€rlauch and whatever else they could find in the woods was one of the few things standing between them and starvation or, at the very least, scurvy.
On the other end of the scale, some people have bought into the stories in the Austrian press over the last few years that say that BĂ€rlauch is out of culinary fashion. They no longer pick or eat it for that reason.
But for families with small children, for example, hunting for BĂ€rlauch is a pleasant way of tiring out the children in the fresh air that keeps everyone happily occupied and out of each otherâs hair. People who have desk jobs get the chance to enjoy the immediate results of their labors for a change. Others use BĂ€rlauch to eke out food budgetsâI have seen family groups going home with shopping bags fullâas well as to add zing to their suppers. For me, finding, picking, cooking, and eating BĂ€rlauch is an experience I associate exclusively with Vienna and my life here. We took many family walks around Walden Pond when I was growing up. We never went home with anything to eat.
It is also something that anyone who picks it associates with early spring. There is a reason for this beyond the heady days of gathering the first shoots. BĂ€rlauch, once it has flowered, is said to resemble lily of the valley, which, as the German name Maiglöckchen suggests, appears in Mayâand is poisonous. Reports vary as to how poisonous it is, and a friend of mine is fond of saying that the only people who end up in hospital with lily of the valley poisoning are husbands whose wives picked and prepared the âBĂ€rlauchâ. Nonetheless, no one really wants to risk it, and it is relatively easy to forego BĂ€rlauch as it gets older because the scent and flavor get more intense and become almost overwhelming.
For all of us who do pick, it seems to bring a special satisfaction. Yes, we save money on our grocery bills, add spice to our menus, and get some exercise in the fresh spring air into the bargain. But every spring when the season begins I wonder if this foraging isnât perhaps also about returning to an earlier time when our ancestors worked physically harder with less security than most of us do today but also with less time pressure, without precise targets, and for something they could benefit from immediately. Wandering through the Vienna Woods basket or bag in hand, picking what is available until one has âenoughâ, then going home and preparing it for supper surely is filling some primal need.
(This piece was originally written in 2010 for submission to the now-defunct Vienna Review.)
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