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Meringue and Coffee Cream Cake at Cafe Diglas

Vienna, Austria – World renowned, the unhurried kaffeehaus tradition continues on in Vienna even as fast food operations and Starbucks multiply around the world.  Underneath chandeliers and delicately-painted, arched ceilings, Austrians gather in cafes for a leisurely coffee and pastry or perhaps a cigarette, soup or open-faced sandwich.  If there are paper to-go cups, I didn’t see one in the eight visits I made to Vienna’s lovely cafes. With each coffee, served on a silver tray, comes a glass of water to indicate that the patron is to sit, relax and sip for as long as he or she pleases.  The intertwining of casual hospitality and an elegant atmosphere is an enchanting combination and I found myself in cafes a lot in Vienna.

One of the city’s most famous cafes, Demel, established in 1786, has branches in the Vienna airport, Salzburg and even New York, in addition to its flagship store located in the city’s center. Walking into Demel’a rococo interior, you pass a fabulous pastry case on the left and a small confectionary store on the right, ahead is a few small intimate rooms filled with smoking patrons, as well as the glass-walled expansive pastry kitchen, where you can watch the pastry chefs rolling out doughs and and piping cream.  I chose to sit upstairs in the nonsmoking section with a little loveseat all to myself and, per my server’s recommendation, ordered the apfelstrudel, a Viennese classic, along with a melange, which is comparable to a latte. Admittedly, I found it a little boring and had my fill after a few bites.  It’s several layers of cooked apple slices with cinnamon and raisons encased by a very thin layer of crispy pastry.  Though the apples had a nice sweet, clean flavor, I found without textural variety it seemed as though I was just munching on a pile of soft apples bite after bite. 

Demel is also known for its sachertorte, a dense two-layer chocolate cake with an apricot jam filling covered with dark chocolate icing, and has been entrenched in a legal battle with Hotel Sacher over where the cake was originally created.  A pastry chef friend of mine claims that the better version can be found at Hotel Sacher, though I tried it at neither location as I’ve heard it’s a dry cake, which sounds unappealing particularly in the face of so many other tantalizing pastries.  Plus, a local food critic and restaurant owner told me that the sachertorte is more famous than delicious.  It’s made to last 8-10 weeks, which would explain why I’ve heard complaints on its lack of moisture.  Yet it can still be found in nearly any Vienna cafe and shipped abroad. 

Also in the city’s center are Gerstner, Heiner and Oberlaa, as well as Schwarzes Kameel, which I didn’t have the chance to visit.  Gerstner was my least favorite of the bunch.  Originally established in 1847 and a few years later appointed the Imperial Court Confectioner, today it consists of a small ground-level cafe with an overworked staff serving what mostly seems a out-of-town clientele and menus that include tourist blurbs on each page.  I got the Gerstner cake, apparently an old original recipe, of six dense bland chocolate layers sandwiching chocolate ganache.  I left after a few bites, unsatisfied with my cake, my coffee and the rushed, somewhat hollow atmosphere.  

Just a few doors down the street bi-level Heiner, though it too was crowded with a busy staff, the dainty rooms were softly lit with floral wallpaper and dark-wood paneling and once seated upstairs on a couch, I felt at ease.  There I ordered a melange and a two-layer chocolate cake with strawberry cream filling in between the layers, whipped cream and toasted almond slivers on the side and topped with oversized strawberries and a generous covering of strawberry gelee.  The cake was fine enough, as was the coffee, but it didn’t compete with my favorite cafe in the area just one street over on Neuer Markt. 

Oberlaa’s pastries were described as on the lighter side, which may explain their appeal to me since I found the 2-inch layers of cream or meringue in other cafes to be a bit excessive.  Upstairs at Oberlaa, perched on a red cushioned bench in a cream-colored room, I dug into a slice of Maroni.  The cake was built on a shortbread-like bottom with layers of chocolate cake, chestnut and milk chocolate mouses, and topped with a pile of chestnut puree strands with an Amarena cherry.  It was light and creamy, sour and sweet, chewy and soft.  In a word, divine.  Oberlaa has about eight locations throughout the city and during my last few hours in Vienna, I happened on their location in the Naschmarkt, where I picked up a piece of the apfel-streusel kuchen, which blew my last apfelstrudel out of the water.  It had a cookie-like bottom, a thin layer of perfectly ripe, sweet and light apple slices, and topped with a crunchy, cinnamon-spiced streusel topping dusted with powdered sugar.  I greedily tore into it on the underground on my way to the airport, and was only sorry I hadn’t discovered it before.

You can order more than pastries at almost any kaffeehaus, many have soups, salads and open-faced sandwiches with ham and cheese or salmon and cream. At Cafe Diglas, the favorite of the world-traveling pastry chef I got my recommendations from, they serve everything from wiener schnitzel, the house specialty, to goulash and dumplings.  We got the augsburger sausage plate, which turned out to be a very soft, pink sausage with potatoes, served by a surly, hulking waiter.  Our pastry, like our waiter, was also oversized and rumpled in an Austrian sort of way.  Undulating layers of meringue sandwiched a layer milk chocolate mouse and were punctuated with horizontal walls of bread.  

Of course, everyone has their own favorite and mine was Sluka, right around the corner from where I was staying in Rathaus.  Outside of the city center, Sluka seems to be frequented only by locals – trim businessmen in suits, older ladies in fur, parents walking their dogs and chic middle-aged women reading hand-written notes.  My first visit to Sluka I had what I believe is called an apfel sonne, a single layer of roasted apple half-moons, brushed with apricot jam, sitting on top a layer of custard that covers a cookie-like bottom of pastry with scalloped edges and sparkling with sugar.  On subsequent visits, I had soup or open-faced sandwiches, but mostly I just liked to sit back in on the velvety sofa watching and listening as the Austrians went about their days.

VIENNA KAFFEEHAUS ADDRESSES (4-digit number indicates the district)

Demel, 1010 Kohlmarkt 14

Cafe Diglas, 1010 Wollzeile 10

Gerstner, 1010 Kärntner Str. 13

Heiner, 1010 Kärntner Str. 21

Oberlaa, 1010 Neuer Markt 16

Schwarzes Kameel, 1010 Bognergasse 7

Sluka, 1010 Rathausplatz 8

Gerstner Cake at Gerstner

Gerstner

Strawberry Cream Cake at Heiner 

Heiner Downstairs

Maroni Cake at Oberlaa 

Oberlaa Downstairs

Apfel Sonne at Sluka

Sluka Mirrors

Sluka Interior

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