First Brettljause Experience for Tourists

Location:Martinjak am Ring
Address:Opernring 11, 1010 Wien
Status:Closed
Eaten:Brettljause, small cheese plate, two beers (Zipfer), ¼ Chardonnay

Here is a restaurant that cannot decide what it wants to be. On the one hand, through a nice modern design and an attempt at quality service it tries to present itself as a relatively posh place. On the other hand, probably due to its location it has to cater for the tastes of idiot tourists. As a result, half of the restaurant’s menu contains “fancy” dishes costing at least 20 Euro, while the other half is the standard Gasthaus stuff. That second half, however, features a Brettljause in a noble effort to acquaint the tourists with one of the best dishes Austria has to offer.

One has to admit, it’s a very small Brettljause, but a surprisingly adequate one. It contains a couple of slices of Speck, a couple of slices of ham, some tasteless cheese, some salty sausage cut into very small cubes, a sausage paste of unknown origin and, most astonishingly, quite a lot of Grammelschmalz. One has to pay some respect to Martinjak for this brave move, because the Schmalz is very authentic (i.e. very good or disgusting depending on your attitude towards this type of thing; in my opinion, it’s very good). All this is accompanied by a strong horseradish, a small Salzgurke, an even smaller baby corn (straight out of a jar) and a very hot round chili pepper, definitely never seen in the mountains of Tyrol.

The menu promised a small bottle of Underberg to go with the Brettljause, but it never materialized on my table. Not that I care about this shit, but if it’s important for you, make sure you complain. Nevertheless, it’s just one of the examples of Martinjak’s small imperfections – the ones I would easily ignore had the restaurant not tried to look expensive. One of the more stupid ones is that the bread (and a rather good bread, I must say) is delivered separately from the dishes you order, so if you, like me, are crazy enough to order a Brettljause and a cheese plate, you’ll have to eat the cheese with the one or two slices of bread left from the Brettljause.

On a positive side, the stuff you get is of a good quality and can hopefully encourage the pork-eating segment of the city’s visitors to go to Tyrol and eat the real Brettljause. And that’s the most important thing.

2.0

Brettljause
Variety
Authenticity
Size
Atmosphere/service
Value

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