| Location: | Herbeck Neue Gastwirtschaft |
| Website: | https://www.herbeck.wien |
| Address: | Scheibenbergstraße 11, 1180 Wien |
| Status: | Open (last checked on 16 October 2026) |
| Eaten: | "Portion Gansl," one beer (Zwickl) |
As a rule, I always return to the restaurant that served me the best goose of the year before. In the case of Herbeck Neue Gastwirtschaft, however, the comeback had to wait five years. This may have something to do with my friend, who went for a second goose at Herbeck at lunchtime and left highly disappointed. Which is understandable: good restaurants like Herbeck prepare geese fresh for the evening and warm up previous day’s geese for lunch. (Bad restaurants cook geese once a week and warm them up in the following days as needed.)
But now I am back, and it’s evening, and the Gansl is just about perfect. There are far too many restaurants in Vienna that do seemingly nothing wrong but end up with forgettable geese (here is a very recent example). Then there are those that stand out in some aspects of goose-cooking art but fail in others. And rarely, very rarely, there are exceptions like Herbeck that manage to do everything right.
Paper-thin crispy skin, tender meat with hardly any fat and the right goose texture, no annoying bones, the right amount of salt throughout the dish (and not just stuck to the skin), a proper sauce home-made to match goose meat – everything that one looks forward to in a Martinigansl you can find in Herbeck’s delicious handiwork. The size of the portion was well above average, while the price was not higher than elsewhere these days. The red cabbage was hot, just as I like it (some people say that it should be lukewarm, but I disagree), and had a gentle, pleasant taste. Plus, there were chestnuts in it, which I always find a welcome addition. The potato dumpling, although not having a lot of taste by itself (the only disappointment compared to my previous experience) was at least different by featuring Butterbrösel (buttered breadcrumbs).
The restaurant’s interior design is not to my liking – I find it too dark and plain with a weird touch of modern – but the service is extremely friendly and nice. I am happy to report that after starting the season with two mediocre offerings, I have finally come across a masterpiece, which other restaurants will certainly struggle to surpass.