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Schinken Eisbein (Pork Leg)

Vienna, Austria – On one of my first nights in Vienna, I found myself in an Irish pub with my host repeating “Velkommen Wien!” (Welcome to Vienna!) about every fifteen minutes.  Later that night, we stopped at one of the city’s numerous stands for one of the region’s great delicacies, a berner wurstel, or a deep-fried bacon-wrapped sausage that has been injected with some kind of non-traditional cheese and then laid to rest on a long crusty loaf of bread.  It may have been the original inspiration for heart-attack food Web site thisiswhyyourefat.com. In addition to the wurstel stands, Vienna’s street food also includes large, but lackluster slices of pizza and plenty of kebab, always sold at the same stand and the little you can find late night after the bars close.

Certainly much of the food in this part of the world is heavy, the stuff that will fatten you up for the long winter.  I saw sausage stands in Prague and Bratislava, as well as pizza and kebab joints.  One of the other things I’d seen quite frequently in Prague was the pork leg (or pork knuckle).  I saw it so much I thought it must be the national dish.  Though I didn’t have it there I must have chattered about it so incessantly and expressed such disappointment on not getting it in Prague that my host must have felt it his hosting duty to provide me with one before I left Europe.

When I woke up on his last day (he was leaving a day before me for work), I found that he had looked up a place in Vienna with the pork leg (knuckle, whatever), not necessarily the best or the most famous, but most certainly a sure bet.  That morning the wind and rain was semi-torrential, bending the curve of the rain and the umbrella, and we had to fight our way to beer pub 7 Stern Braun, arriving damp and a bit tattered.  Our beers came first, a 1/2 liter of something dark for him and the 0.2 liter of the dubbel for me.  It looked child-sized, which is about all the beer I can handle.  The towering pork leg arrived quickly.  It was served with the utensils sticking out of it in a violent fashion and with dark bread, mustard, horseradish and cabbage salad on the side.

My companion was somewhat of a pork leg connoisieur, having eaten one daily on his European tour a few years back, gaining deep knowledge on pork legs, as well as about 10 pounds or 4.5 kilos as they might say in these parts.  Each place, he told me, had their own style.  At some, the skin was crispier and at others the meat flavored differently.  I suppose the infinite pork leg variety kept him going back for more.

The skin on ours wasn’t super crispy and although the pork leg seemed imposingly and impossibly big, the meat was manageable (for two) once the rubbery skin had been cast aside.  I slathered mustard on my dark bread, heaped soft hunks of pork on top and then bit in, savoring the tender meat.  In between bites, I found myself reaching for cabbage salad because, at least for me, the onslaught of meat needed to be lightened with something, like the acid of a cabbage salad or say…chilies.

Käsekrainer (Cheese-Filled Sausage)

Kebab Pizza Stand

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