There is a popular misconception that the countryside is full of hardly known yet brilliant restaurants waiting to be discovered. The more distant a restaurant is and the quainter it looks, the higher is the chance, some believe, that it will serve a home-cooked dish that will surprise with its quality. To tell the truth, I fell for the same mistake more than once. Today’s goose at Waldschenke was just another entry on the list.
As far as remote countryside restaurants are concerned, Waldschenke is hard to beat. The village of Kurzschwarza (population 85) is by itself at least a one and a half hour drive away from Vienna, and Waldschenke is not even there but situated on the edge of the nearby woods. To be more countryside than Waldschenke, a restaurant ought to be just a campfire in the middle of a forest, with the people who work there unable to read and write, speaking in a crude language of 38.5 words, but nevertheless having strong opinions about the dangers of COVID-19 vaccines.
Waldschenke is quite nice, actually. The restaurant is spacious, has a nice garden with a playground for kids, and its toilets are clean and modern. The number of animal skulls and mounts on the walls was slightly unsettling, but it was comforting to think that the chances of them being part of my dinner were extremely low. I had pre-ordered a goose, after all.
Unfortunately, I doubt that my pre-ordering made any difference, for the goose that arrived at my table looked pre-boiled and roasted just before the serving and not long enough. The skin had the consistency of a damp rag, and the meat was fibrous and wet as if just taken out of a soup. The goose was swimming in a brown garlic-flavored sauce that did not have the garlic spread evenly. As a result, a few bites I took were far too garlicky for a goose, while in the others the sauce was so bland that it managed to take the taste away from the goose, rather than add to it. The goose was also full of bones of various sizes and had quite a few dark slimy bits that did not appear edible, so once I finished eating the meat (which was not bad if kept away from the sauce), the skeleton left on my plate looked highly unappetizing. The only part of the dish that I really enjoyed and finished was the cold white cabbage salad, but travelling 130 kilometers to enjoy a half-plate of salad is not justified.
I am quite sure that Waldschenke is good for something. I would gladly believe that it serves good game (the bodies of the animals whose heads decorate the walls must go somewhere) or even a Brettljause. It is not a good place to eat a Martinigansl, however.
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