The history repeats itself, kind of. Re-reading my rather unfavorable review of Wia z’haus Lehner’s from 2019, I see that on the following day I came back to the restaurant to try its Brettljause but did not get one. Yesterday I had another suboptimal goose at Lehner’s, yet today revisited it to check if the Brettljause was available. The waitress was not sure at first (“Brettljause is not really winter food,” she said – the statement with which I fully concur), but having quickly checked with the cook, came back nodding, “Yes, we can make you one.” Funnily, there was the same uncertainty regarding the goose five years ago.
Well, the Brettljause I received was infinitely better than the goose I got then or yesterday. It was also one of the strangest Brettljausen ever. I am actually far from being sure you will get anything similar if you order one (though you have all the rights to show the waiter the picture on this page and insist). In fact, several of my friends who had looked at the photo suggested that the cook simply dumped on my plate the leftovers from other clients’ lunches.
I have no proof, of course – and do not really want to have a proof, to be honest – but to start with, the Brettljause featured two big lukewarm potions of Wiener Schnitzel on the top of other ingredients. There were also four generous slices of minced meat patties, with much more bread than meat in them and tasting faintly of liver. And this was in addition to three huge balls of spread and a pile of cold cuts covered with onions, pepperoncini, mustard and horseradish.
For some reason, I found the schnitzel very enjoyable. Perhaps deep inside I was looking for a hot dish today, and the schnitzel, while not hot, was not completely cold either. Besides, it compensated for the lack of bread; the single provided bread slice was not at all sufficient for the spreads, let alone the cold cuts, whereas mixing the schnitzel with the spreads benefitted both of them. In true Upper Austrian fashion, the spreads did not have much taste of their own: one was made out of quark, another of potatoes, and the third one, judging by its pinkish color, contained red beet.
By the time I reached the cold cuts (I managed to eat only one slice of liver patty), I was anything but hungry, but the Schweinsbraten and the Geselchtes impressed me with their quality and strong taste. Even the cheese had taste, though I suspect it was a standard Tilsiter out of a supermarket’s plastic packaging. The only problem was that the cold cuts were piled on top of each other and glued together. The only way to eat them was as a weird Schweinsbraten-Geselchtes-cheese sandwich.
Again, I am not sure that the Brettljause I got at Lehner was in accordance to the restaurant’s standard recipe and not a cruel joke the cook decided to play on me. It was totally unfinishable – I think I would have died had I tried – but it was also very good. Even if all you get when you order it will be the cold cuts and the spreads, I promise that you will leave satisfied.
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