In summer, Gasthof Zum Renner in Vienna’s wine district of Nussdorf has a very nice garden. Last time I was there (which was incidentally also the first time for me), I got really impressed by it as well as by the huge Florentine-style steak a guy at the next table was eating.
Inside, Zum Renner is not very nice. The rooms are quite small and packed with tables, and it’s hard to get in or out without some serious shifting of furniture. The lights are too bright, and the noise (probably because of three or four huge groups of people having parties at the same time) was almost unbearable. Despite the menu looking tourist-oriented, all the visitors were Austrians, and at least half of them were eating goose, which could at least mean that the birds were freshly cooked.
The birds were juicy enough, true, which does not mean they were good. Every dish served – and I have checked that very carefully – was a goose leg, and unless geneticists have recently come up with four-legged geese, Zum Renner must have acquired quite a number of pre-cut and frozen legs before the start of the Martinigansl season. The result was acceptable, but quite industrial, with certain parts tasting almost of chicken, and other parts being nothing else but a bone wrapped in layers of fat and overcooked skin.
The red cabbage had an unnatural, “perfumed” taste, and the potato dumpling was of a sticky tasteless kind, not even able to absorb the juice. Nothing to recommend here.
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