There are many notable European culinary traditions. Obviously, French gastronomic technique sets a standard for chefs to build upon. Italian cuisine, with its emphasis on fresh ingredients in relatively simple combinations, is one of the world’s most popular. And in the colder climes of the Alpine Austro-Hungarian empire, heartier dishes — braised meats, dumplings, and root vegetables — lead the way. After all, until the relatively recent phenomenon of overnight shipping, cuisine was shaped by the products at hand.
So it’s in that context that my party approaches the exterior of Cafe Vienna, nestled in a strip of shops along 4th Street North, with life-size cartoon figures in traditional Alpine garb setting the tone for the evening. The atmosphere is relaxed and the tables, with colorful cloths and plexiglas toppers, indicate that Cafe Vienna is a family-style restaurant — the sort of place where you might hang out down an average village street in Austria, complete with cuckoo clock.
We begin with two typical appetizers from the region, marinated herring and potato pancakes. As to be expected, they’re not house-marinating fresh fish in a homemade brine. What arrives atop a small plate of lettuce leaves appears to be a purchased product; small, glistening chunks of the sweet and sour fish that you might pick up at your local grocery. If you’re a fan, as I am, they deliver just what you’d anticipate.
Potato pancakes are a staple of Germanic cuisine. I’ve made them many times from my maternal grandmother’s recipe. At their best, they’re a deep golden brown and crisp. Unfortunately, the quartet of potato pancakes that arrives to start our dinner are a dark gray brown with tiny flecks of black, with an oily surface totally lacking in any crunch. The traditional applesauce and sour cream accompaniments can’t mask the flaws.
All entrees include an undistinguished soft, fluffy white bread loaf with some whipped butter and your choice of the soup of the day, or either a cucumber or house salad. The rustic sauerkraut and bean soup is one of the evening’s highlights, and the cucumber salad features a small plate of diminutive, wafer-thin slices tiled in concentric circles covering the dish with a dollop of tangy sour cream at the center of the plate. Again, an accurate reflection of what you’d find in the region. The house salad is also fresh, but unremarkable.
For our entrees, we choose classic dishes of the cuisine to see what spin or flare Cafe Vienna might provide. One fixture is the traditional sauerbraten — a Germanic culinary cousin to France’s boeuf Bourguignon, where a less tender cut of meat is transformed by a red wine braise into a tender meal bursting with flavor. In this case, beef loin marinates for five days in red wine with vinegar and spices. The meat takes on a tangy flavor often balanced with a touch of sweetness. I’ve been making a version for decades with a gingersnap-sour cream gravy that counters the tartness and lusciously coats the traditional spaetzle, a tiny noodle-like dumpling.
Cafe Vienna’s sauce lacks that extra dimension, instead rendering the meat and spaetzle dull and one-dimensional. Only the traditional red cabbage perks up the palate, with a touch of sweetness balancing the tartness and spices.
Pork wiener schnitzel pounds flat a center cut of pork which is then breaded and pan-fried to a golden brown. Here we suffer from the same fate as the potato pancakes. The enormous pounded pork overhangs the plate, but is dry and an unappealing gray-brown instead of golden. Luckily, the accompanying Lyonnaise potatoes are creamy and retain just enough bite to help distract from the schnitzel.
The beef stroganoff has a distinct Germanic twist; the red wine sauce focuses on finely chopped dill pickles and Dijon mustard with just a touch of sour cream. Again, perhaps because I’m used to a richer sauce — including mushrooms and ample sour cream — the result strikes me as bland. It’s not unpleasant, just boring.
A filet of grilled Norwegian wild salmon is offered with five different sauces. Choose from pepper, garlic/herb, Mediterranean, zigeuner (a paprika-tomato-bell pepper combo) or primo, a tart dairy & dill mix that was our choice. It’s the most successful of our entrees, but still lacks panache, even with the accompanying risotto and vegetable of the day, in this case green beans. The flavors merely hum when they need to sing.
When time for desserts arrives, we again jump right to the classics that make Vienna a haven for cake and pastry aficionados. The handmade strudel has a crisp, almost transparent dough wrapped around thinly sliced apples that still retain bite and texture with just enough sweetness, balanced by a touch of cinnamon and raisins. It’s served “mit schlag,” with light cream whipped just to hold its shape, which perfectly marries with the strudel.
The Sachertorte, that world-famous Viennese chocolate cake from the historic Hotel Sacher, is not tall like an American layer cake, but rather a thin torte of firm unleavened genoise that is not overly moist, but provides a welcome textural contrast to a surprising layer of apricot jam filling and an intense dark chocolate glaze. Cafe Vienna’s is more like a gooey pudding cake without any discernible apricot. Without the proper texture and an unmistakable hit of fruit, the cake is disappointing, even if it is a fine example of what you might produce in your home kitchen under the watchful eye of Duncan Hines.