Beisljause

I must have lived in Austria for too long, because any restaurant where one still finds Maggi Würze next to salt and pepper immediately earns extra points in my eyes. I also find it nice when the waiter sits at a table in the corner of the room, smoking and reading a newspaper – as long as he does not forget to take my order and refill my beer, that is.

Wild is such a place. It calls itself a Heuriger-Restaurant, but it’s more of a Viennese Beisl, located in the mini-district of Jedlersdorf. The area is somehow known for its wine, but even the most educated non-locals pass it by on their way to the much more famous Stammersdorf.

Wild’s Brettljause is huge (probably intended for sharing), very meaty and not very varied. OK, it’s not varied at all. Once the overwhelming amount of blood sausage finally got consumed, what was left on the Brettl were the Krakauer (or Bierschinken how this sausage is called outside Austria), the “standard” gray Schweinsbraten, and a much fatter type of Schweinsbraten tasting a bit like a Stelze, in other words, quite strongly of pig. That latter ingredient was also full of cartilage, requiring some careful surgical effort to cut out the inedible bits.

It certainly helped that I was hungry, but at the end, the vast amount of meat started to make me long for something lighter and healthier. Good that I took a salad, so I could stare at it cravingly until my Brettl was empty and then take great pleasure in tasting it. The salad turned out to be so full of garlic that I could not forget it until the next morning, but the first bite was truly wonderful.