A Hardcore Brettljause for Very Hungry People

To describe Wippel’s Brettljause in one word: enormous. For less than 6 Euro one gets ten types of sausage and a lonely piece of cheese. According to the waiter/owner, the cheese is the only ingredient (apart from the horseradish, the mustard, the Pfefferoni and the Salzgurke, I suppose) that is not produced in the restaurant’s own butchery. In other words, you are faced with an awful lot of dead pig, processed in various ways. The sausages come uncut (which is a good thing) and in two occasions still with the skin (not so good). If I remember it correctly, there were three types of cold Schweinsbraten (though they may have different names), three salami-type sausages, a Blutwurst, a Sulz, a very hard thin smoked sausage and a tough meatless Speck. Strangely, the last four were the best of the lot, though I would normally eat them first to get rid of the stuff I don’t like. The Speck was a real challenge for my poor old teeth, taking a very long time to chew. It’s amazing that a piece of fat can be so tough, but it gets tastier the longer you chew it. The smoked sausage could not be cut with a knife, but was more than chewable with the teeth.

The salamis were not exciting, and the Schweinsbraten were rather plain to my liking, but they did provide a lot of variety, which is always important. The salad was, honestly, disgusting, but Stiegl is not bad compared to some other beers. The place was very empty at the time of the visit (17:00 on a Sunday), but I would imagine it to be quite popular. They have monthly grill parties in summer, with spare ribs, and I would rather trust them to be good.

I wish they could replace two-three similar sausages with two-three different cheeses. But as they obviously don’t produce cheese, it would have to come from a supermarket, so maybe they are doing the right thing, after all.

In conclusion, so far this Brettljause was the closest to the ones found in the mountains of Styria and Tyrol. There is nothing I know closer to Vienna that can compare to this one. Though you do feel afterwards like having eaten a cold Grillplatte for two.