There are people who say that real Heurige must have a buffet. I, on the other hand, never really enjoyed queueing up for a slice of Kümmelbraten with a cabbage salad. Ordering dishes off the menu and letting someone else take care of bringing them to your table is a fantastic convenience that does not make a Heuriger less authentic to me, providing the taste is good. My only piece of advice to the taverns that have menus is: please, publish them online. If I knew that a Brettljause was available so close to Vienna, a 10-minute walk from the Seegrotte (an old mine with an underground lake – a popular destination for an interesting, though somewhat short excursion), I would have visited Freudorfer long before.
I would have probably visited it multiple times already, for the Brettljause Freudorfer serves is superb (and there are a couple of other Brettljause-like dishes in the menu that look appetizing). It comes on a normal plate rather than a wooden plank, but that is its only downside. OK, had the number of ingredients been greater – a couple of strong cheese sorts would have been especially welcome – I would have awarded Freudorfer an additional point if not two. But still, the five types of meat and the Liptauer were all fresh and tasted fantastic. Even the horseradish was refreshingly strong – something I don’t remember experiencing for a year at least.
The Heuriger is by no means fancy. The only distinguishable attribute of it is a piece of rock that occupies part of a room and adds “Felsen” to its name, but once you have seen the rock, there is nothing special about Freudorfer except good wine and an unexpectedly good Brettljause. Which is all what is needed, really.
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