Boringer

Augustinerkeller must be a place that quite a few people write home from every day. No, they don’t really write letters or postcards these days, but WhatsApp messages, tweets, e-mails and whatever other things tourists now use to connect with their families and friends. I am sure they write stuff like, “Just out of Albertina, which is a sort of a museum. One more attraction off my list!” On the other hand, while people write home from Augustinerkeller, I very much doubt they write home about it. Maybe except for an occasional “I ate a pork knuckle! It’s, like, ENORMOUS! I hope the pig was not hurt.”

The point is, central location and fancy cellar aside, there is not much to write home about this restaurant’s food, and its Heurigenplatte is a great example why. At a first sight, it has all the standard ingredients, and the white cheese even looks like an original idea. Yet soon you realize that the cheese does not really have any taste, the Speck is too fat, the Schweinsbraten is soggy, and the ball of what looks like Verhackertes is in fact a strange meaty spread with a slight liver flavor and serious lack of any spices including salt.

This Brettljause is not bad, just horribly boring and too expensive for what it is. I have also made the mistake of sitting at one of the tables outside, resulting in my constantly hearing the cars passing by and suffering from the faint smell of piss. Which quite certainly did not come from the fiacre horses by the Albertina museum but from the somewhere much closer, like the bushes separating the tables from the street.