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A large piece of veal covering the edge of the plate, marinated in its juice, sealed and fried in a crispy breadcrumb crust, with a fresh vegetable salad, makes up one of the most famous traditional Austrian meat dishes – Viennese schnitzel. But this is only the top of the multifaceted Austrian and Tyrolean cuisine, which, as a rule, you will be offered in restaurants in Vienna, Innsbruck, Graz, Linz, and other Austrian cities.
Among the boiled, fried, steamed, and baked dishes, you must try delicious cheese soup, boiled beef seasoned uniquely with horseradish and baked apples, cured ham, tender goose liver, and trout fillet. In a restaurant near you, or any cafe, you will be surprised by Tyrolean gray cheese made from alpine milk, mountain honey, pickled fruits and jams made by Austrian farmers, and of course, delicious bread, fresh and fragrant pastries from local bakeries, fried according to Viennese and Tyrolean recipes for fragrant coffee and the incomparable taste of chocolate.
And, of course, the topic for gourmets has mulled wine and a large selection of national Austrian drinks – various liqueurs and schnapps, in particular, made from Swiss cedar pine from Ötztal.
But this is only the beginning of the multifaceted gastronomic traditions of Austria and Tyrol.
Traditional Austrian cooks absorbed the best of the national culture of their neighbors – Poland, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, etc., whose territories were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for centuries. The tastes of Austrians were influenced by Germany, Italy, and even Turkey. At the same time, such borrowing allowed them to successfully adapt to Austrian culture over a long period, add a piquant taste note, and borrow ingredients for their traditional Austrian dishes.
For example, when you order the famous Viennese-style Austrian goulash in Vienna or regional restaurants, you will find the taste of Hungarian goulash in it, but without the taste of paprika. Or a delicious Austrian national dessert – palatschinken pancakes, with thick cream and apricot jam. Foodies claim they share similarities with French crepes, Hungarian palacsintachis, and Romanian placinta.
Judaism imposed a specific transformation on Austrian cuisine. For example, the recipe for stuffed fish has now been transformed into resulted krapfen in restaurants and family feasts.
Such richness and diversity of national combinations of neighbors’ gastronomic tastes, supplemented with local flavor, have become a real traditional Austrian masterpiece.
However, many mistakenly compare Austrian cuisine with Viennese cuisine. It does not. Moreover, this is a false statement for those unfamiliar with Austria and its regional features.
Of course, such a statement is connected, first of all, with the traditional symbols of this country – the delicious “Sacher” cake, made of biscuit chocolate cakes and several layers of apricot jam, Viennese schnitzel, melange, apple strudel, etc.
Austria is a small country with a great historical past. With preserved national culture and traditions inherent in each region. Yes, Vienna smells sweetly of incomparable pastries; the sweet aroma of deep-fried food can be felt in the air. Here in local restaurants, you will be offered tafelspitz. Beef with broth, applesauce, and apple horseradish. Or delicious and juicy schnitzel in a crispy, tender crust. Here, you will get incomparable pleasure from a seemingly simple dish – dumplings filled with juicy minced meat with crackling.
A diverse selection of first courses, including cheese soup or soup with broken dumplings and an egg. Or broth with liver meatballs.
Gourmets will order the Buckhandle chicken. Juicy pieces are breaded in breadcrumbs, egg, and flour and fried in melted butter. This dish will be served with fried chicken offal with potato or green salad.
Among the classics – a seemingly ordinary piece of beef rubbed with spices, fried in oil, and baked in the oven – roast beef with onions. With a sauce flavored with wine and paprika, a side of pasta, or fried potatoes, this dish has always been appreciated by the aristocrats of the times of the Habsburg Empire.
Among the modern recipes is the famous roast beef Girardirostbraten, named after the Austrian actor Girardi. It is a classic roast beef served with a special sauce composed of onions fried in lard, wine, cream, mushrooms, capers, mustard, and lemon zest. Extremely tasty.
Connoisseurs will not pass by the classic Viennese sausage, in which, for the first time, German butcher Johann Lahner, originally from Frankfurt, who moved to Vienna, used a mixture of beef and pork for its filling. Since then, there has been an ongoing dispute between these countries regarding which city is the birthplace of sausages.
A national Austrian specialty is that you will be offered a side dish of potatoes, pickled cucumbers, and onions with crackers seasoned with mayonnaise or yogurt for almost all dishes. Among the side dishes, square flickered pasta with ham or cabbage is famous, and beef and fish are flavored with sweet and sour apple sauce Apfelkren.
Among the snacks, they like Liptauer bread from cheese grated with butter, sweet red pepper, cumin, and finely chopped green onions.
In the fast food restaurants nearby, or restaurants in the cities of Graz, Linz, Innsbruck, or others including fast food, you will be able to quickly grab a delicious meat, cheese, or sausage sandwich or a white bun with a fried “bratwurst” sausage, generously decorated with spicy sauce. Or sausages from sheep intestine with pork, beef, and paprika
Smoked cheese sausages with horseradish or sweet ketchup are also famous here. And yet, a classic remains a classic. Frankfurter sausages smoked on beech sawdust, white Munich sausages, and standard Viennese sausages.
Despite the rich Austrian gastronomic traditions, fast food restaurants such as Mcdonald’s and Burger King and Chinese, Indian, and Korean cuisine are near me.
Speaking about the traditions of Austria, it is worth noting that this is precisely the country that has no equal in terms of the number of sweet dishes. Pancakes, souffles, pies, cakes, strudels, thin dough rolls. All this is stuffed with strawberries, cherries, fried apples, various seeds and raisins, spinach, and cheeses. And when everything is combined in a single taste with chocolate syrup, cream, ice cream, and Viennese coffee, you get a unique taste of pleasure.
Cherry Donauwelle, almond-chocolate Esterházy-Torte, Mozartkugel chocolates, etc., have become real dessert classics among cakes.
And, of course, the peak sale, the favorite sweets of the former Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I – the Kaiserschmarrn omelet, made from a sweet, delicate pancake with cherries, almonds, raisins, pieces of apples, plums, which is served with apple jam or plum compote.
At the same time, Austrian culinary traditions are not limited to Vienna, whose cuisine is considered more aristocratic and refined. Each region is unique. Linz, for example, is proud of its signature almond butter cake with jam and large round cookies with almonds, cloves, and cinnamon. Ischli is famous for its signature Ischler Törtchen cakes, made of shortcrust pastry filled with chocolate cream and covered with icing and pistachios.
In Carinthia, you will taste lake and river fish; you will discover the world of dumplings, dumplings, noodles, flatbreads, and pancakes; Salzburg will delight you with sweet dumplings and vanilla souffle; Lower Austria is famous for game dishes; Styria will reveal the incomparable taste of cuisine seasoned with pumpkin butter and stewed meat. On the menu of Tyrolean cuisine, you will find hot, hearty dishes that correspond to the harsh terrain in the mountains. We will talk about this below.
Tyrol is a special place on the map of Austria. High Alps, crystal clear lakes, vast meadows, and dense forests. These cities are comfortable for tourists in the summer, on high mountain hikes with a backpack, and for fans of ski slopes in the winter. The places here are harsh, especially in winter. Therefore, gastronomic preferences have specific characteristics. Food should be nutritious and tasty. This is the main thing in mountain cuisine.
Let’s start with a simple, traditional Tiroler Gröstl, uncomplicated in both the choice of ingredients and the preparation. Bacon, onions, and fried potatoes topped with an egg tasted great right out of the pan.
The local delicacy Tiroler Speck has been produced in Tyrol for over five hundred years. It is a ham seasoned with fragrant spices and cold-smoked on beech rolling pins until ready. The finished product’s taste is incomparable, especially when served with pickled cucumbers and horseradish.
Kasspatzln is a cheese dish made from local cuttlefish with a strong taste, such as Bergkäse or Graukäse. Small pieces of soft dough are pressed into boiling water through a special grater, where it is boiled until ready, seasoned with fried onions, and generously seasoned with cheese.
Traditional cheese dumplings, Kyaseknedel, are usually made from stale bread and mixed with raw eggs, milk, butter, onions, and spices. Usually, it is all fried in butter or boiled and served with salads. They are incredibly delicious in broth.
Alpine milk used to make Tiroler Bergkäse hard cheese gives it a unique spicy taste.
And, of course, the Tyrolean Speckknödelsuppe, a rich, evident beef blend molded from stale bread and bacon float.
Tyrol’s restaurants are diverse in their themes and charms for tourists. Hence, the checklist is challenging to evaluate unambiguously. Here, you can be satisfied with a small amount of funds and pay a check with several zeros. Here are some restaurants in and around Innsbruck that deserve your attention.
Among the inexpensive restaurants, it is worth visiting Lichtblick, located in the galleries of the city hall on the seventh floor.
There must be more space for many guests, but the beautiful view and delicious food make up for it. By the way, a 360 Grad bar is nearby on the same floor. There, you can get the same view of the city and choose a more straightforward menu.
The chic Onyrik restaurant with a limited number of seats will satisfy your gastronomic imagination and help you avoid making a mistake in the chefs’ choice of expensive drinks and culinary creations.
Beautifully decorated, comfortable with good cuisine in the old town, the Sitzwohl restaurant or the Austrian classic restaurant Weisses Rössl with Tyrolean cuisine, a terrace, and an average checklist.
Surprisingly, the Italian restaurant Le Murge does not offer pizza but prepares three dishes to choose from every day.
At Sensei or Umaya, you can try Asian cuisine, and at Miso-Korean.
A juicy hamburger will please you in the Ludwig or Zum Wohl Tirol burger restaurant.
If you indulge and have enough patience, you will find yourself at a single table for ten people at the Mexican Chef Oscar, where you will be offered a six-course fixed menu for dinner.
Olive restaurant is decorated in a Scandinavian style – a place for vegans with an average price on the checklist. Or you can choose a vegetarian and vegan menu at the Green Flamingo restaurant.
Near Innsbruck in small Lans, the Der Walzl restaurant awaits you with excellent schnitzel and German and Austrian cuisine. At Wild Bean Café in Ampassa, you will be offered a menu of Jewish cuisine.
Real Tyrolean food will be served in Sitrans in the Sistranser Alm restaurant.
Current Austrian cuisine is actively developing. The culinary skills and a variety of Tyrolean dishes that Innsbruck restaurants offer, in particular to tourists and vacationers, whose flow is increasing every year, are also developing and improving. And this is with high competition in this industry as well. For people who want to see the charms of the Tyrolean Innsbruck at any time of the year, not only the traditional restaurants in the old town area and its surroundings but also many competitors that complement it with their national culture have opened their doors. Chinese, Indian, and Korean restaurants and McDonald’s and Burger King make me feel comfortable in the old town.
And Tyrolean chefs, especially in iconic Innsbruck restaurants, have to show the pinnacle of skill in this matter, both in choosing the best products from local farmers and in preparing meals. Here, picking up all the necessary grocery sets at the Metro is impossible.
Alpine beef carpaccio with pesto and ginger sauce, Tyrolean dumplings, Ötztal donuts, Carinthian dumplings, rum cakes “Gugelhupf,” egg-baked white bread with jam and sugar, apricot dumplings Marillenknedl.
And with your coffee, Liège will offer you a real miracle – Früchtebrot bread, baked with dates, figs, raisins, dried apricots, prunes, and dried pears. Or a delicious biscuit donut soaked in apricot jam, chocolate, punch, or rum.
Here, it is appropriate to mention the sweets, bread, and confectionery baked at Tereza Melk’s bakery for over ninety years. This is the name of the founder of the bakery she bought in Innsbruck in the thirties of the last century. Since then, artificial additives, emulsifiers, and dyes are not used in baking bread and block products here. No matter what you buy. Whether it will be a Goldweckerl roll with quinoa, sesame, flax, and poppy seeds, a roll with Austrian sunflower seeds, or dumplings with cottage cheese or apricot.
At the production of Tereza Mölk, a project was implemented today to process food waste, more precisely, yesterday’s bread, for the output of one of the best gins in the country, the Herr Friedrich series in the Tyrolean style. This is an exciting story for connoisseurs of this product. Forty-degree drinks, Mr. Friedrich Blue Edition and Mr. Friedrich Black Edition, differ because the first, made based on yesterday’s bread, juniper, special herbs, and roots, changes color to purple when mixed with lemon or tonic. In the second case, biochar is added to the drink, which turns the drink black when shaken.
Herr Friedrich Eierlikör, a light fifteen percent liqueur, is produced only based on eggs from free-range Austrian hens.
Austrian and Tyrolean cuisine is a mixture of age-old traditions, historical values, and culture of the people.
This is another chance to look at familiar places from the other side and discover something new for yourself. And it doesn’t matter where you get to know Tyrolean cuisine – in the high Alps near a hot grill with meat and a glass of plum schnapps or in a fashionable restaurant with a glass of mulled wine. The essence of knowing the secrets of Austrian haute cuisine remains the same.
True, this is not the only secret of the Tyrol region. An essential element of the story is a lot of unexpected things. For example, the national drink schnapps, which in Germany is considered its national treasure. The Austrians disagree with this, historically confirming that this product began to be produced in Tyrol in the fifteenth century, and only then did the neighbors get used to it. But this is an entirely different story.
