Down Memory Lane

Walking from the tram stop Albertgasse to my next Martinigansl destination, I had a weird feeling of coming back home. The reason for that is that the bar/restaurant Albert is almost next door to the house where I spent one of the more memorable years of my youth. The area had looked very different at the time, mind you. In the beginning of the 90ies, Josefstadt was a bit of a depressing place, a home to student dorms, small shops (including my favorite computer game shop Iljin) and smoke-filled cellar restaurants that I did not dare enter. While close to the city center (something I did not appreciate at the time), Josefstadt was a kind of a buffer between the bohemian, conservative, but nicer areas closer to the Ring and the foreigner neighborhoods near the Gürtel. Albertgasse was in fact a kind of a border between the two.

Now, Albertgasse looks like the dining hotspot of Vienna. Apart from Albert, there is a sophisticated-looking Asian restaurant on the same street and a tiny Italian eatery nearby with a tantalizing smell of grilled seafood coming out of it. The former motorcycle shop has turned into a huge pizza restaurant, and there is a tapas bar behind the game store that used to be Iljin. At least Café Hummel, a traditional Austrian restaurant next to the tram stop where I had some of my first beers, and Tunnel, a student café known for its live performances are still there.

But enough nostalgia. Albert Restaurant & Bar is first and foremost a bar, and only then a restaurant. That became clear to me the moment I entered it and was told – in a very polite way – that despite my online reservation, there was no spare table for me. (On the other hand, I was immediately offered to sit at an empty table for six people and stayed there alone for the entire length of my dinner.) While I was eating, several groups of people entered and left again, sometimes even without ordering anything. It looked as if passing by Albert was part of their daily routine. The “real” dining tables were few and located at the back of the restaurant, and I am not sure I would have liked to sit there, for the space was rather confined, and the lights were too bright.

As you can imagine, eating a goose at a place that feels like a bar while sitting on a stool inevitably turns into a hastier experience than dining at a quiet, laid-back restaurant. That is a pity, because the goose was actually very well prepared, in a classic Martinigansl way. The thigh parts were unquestionably the best, featuring paper-thin crunchy skin and well-roasted, tender meat. The leg, on the other hand, was less impressive, tasting more boiled than roasted and lacking salt. There were a few chestnuts around the goose, and while lukewarm, they did not appear particularly necessary. The potato dumplings were OK, but small, and while on other occasions I would have welcomed that fact, today I felt like 25% more dumplings would have been useful to absorb all of the sauce.

The red cabbage was really good, though, and that was thanks to not overdoing. It was neither crunchy, nor sweet, nor salty, nor cinnamon-y. Instead, it was very easy and pleasant to eat, either with the meat or all by itself. I also had a feeling that the cabbage was swimming in some sort of a soup, and that was why the restaurant had served it with a soupspoon. Weirdly, however, the cabbage also contained hard bits of something. Those bits did not have any taste, but created a pressure on my teeth, sending a warning signal to the brain (“is my tooth going to break?”) Chewing those bits was not a problem, however, and as the lights over my table were dimmed, I think I will never know what those bits were.

If one only looks at the cooking skills, Albert’s Martinigansl was superb, and the price charged for it (32 euros) was actually very fair. I do, however, have my reservations about the atmosphere of the restaurant (but not of the service, which I found very nice). What I would recommend Albert’s decision-makers is to capitalize on their restaurant’s image and deliver a goose that would be less classic. Add some unusual spices or serve the goose with some unconventional side dishes, and you will have a winner at your hands.