I doubt anyone would question the superlative that Vienna is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, with a level of sophistication that surpasses any shy of Paris.
      Given its central location on the continent, just a few miles from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, Vienna has always drawn in other cultures that have influenced its history, science, art, history and cuisine.  It was once a royal city and capital of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, and 152 years ago Franz Josef I created the Ringstrasse that encircles the city’s historic center, still dotted with historic cafés, and around which runs the always-on-time tram and puts you within walking distance of every grand attraction, from the Hofburg Palace, the Rathaus Town Hall, Parliament and State Opera (left) to the magnificent museums that include Kunsthistorisches Museum (below)—which has the world’s greatest collection of Breughels—the endless corridors of the Naturhistorisches Museum,  and the very modern Museumsquartier, converted from the former Imperial Stalls.
    Simply strolling along the broad, winding Kärntner Strasse, lined with designer boutiques, cafés, chocolate shops, restaurants and street performers, is a sure way to get a palpable sense of Vienna’s street life.  Dominant on the Strasse is St. Stephen's Cathedral (below), dating, as a smaller church, back to 1147.  Saved from destruction in World War II only because a German captain refused his superior’s orders to reduce it to rubble, it has been undergoing renovation ever since, with most of the exterior scrubbed clean, though the interior is still dark with centuries of soot and grime.
    Of course, like Salzburg, Vienna is one of the world’s great music cities. Franz Schubert, Johann Strauss and Arnold Schoenberg were born there, and Mozart, Salieri, Beethoven, Haydn, Mahler, Liszt, Bruckner and Brahms all came to work there.  All have their works performed throughout the year at many venues —the State Opera, Musikverein Golden Hall and Konzerthaus, the Volksopera, and Kursalon concert hall.
    Like all great capitals, Vienna has its great hotels—the Imperial, the Sacher, the new Park Hyatt—all of them completely brought up to 21st century standards.  This year my wife and I stayed at the Hotel Ritz Carlton Vienna and the Hotel Grand Ferdinand nearby, both proximate to the Ringstrasse.
    The Hotel Ritz Carlton Vienna is composed of four historic palaces in different architectures—Renaissance, baroque and Gothic—along with magnificent 19th century marble staircases with superb ceiling murals, to which have been added a very modern lobby and lounge, done in an equestrian motif, a spa and indoor pool (with underwater music) and rooftop bar. The bar has a breathtaking panorama on the city and in December turns into a cheery Christmas market and place to get hot drinks.
      The hotel’s 202 rooms (above) and 43 suites achieve a balance of comfort and modern amenities that go with being a five-star property, and it’s no wonder the extravagant Crystal Ballroom  and other banquet rooms host more than 450 balls each year.  The Ritz-Carlton Club Lounge, located on the 7th floor, not only offers morning through evening respite and good food, but I found the concierge could not do enough to help my wife and me with plans and change of plans.
    (Next week I shall report on the hotel’s unique DSTRIKT Steakhouse, which has garnered great popularity. )   
    The owner of the Hotel Grand Ferdinand, Florian Weitzer, says that his aim upon taking over a landmarked 1950s building, once headquarters for the research company Veitscher Magnesitwerke AG, was to make it “splendidly contemporary, free of forced flashbacks—and filled with unparalleled spirit." He calls it “Viennese Elegance Re-Loaded.” In that spirit he named it in honor of Emperor Ferdinand, retaining several of his favorite recipes in the Restaurant Am Ring (of which I shall write next week) and in the building’s Grand Étage above Vienna's rooftops, which is used for the breakfast buffet, as well as lunch and dinner.  There’s also a rooftop pool (left) overlooking the city.  Wi-Fi is free and there is an exercise room.
    The rooms and suites have a canny blend of contemporary black-and-white minimalist design and Secessionist flourishes in claw-foot bathtubs, tufted divans, round mirrors and glass brick walls (right).  There is one unusual room, called the Dorm, set up with eight bunk beds and brass ladders, surrounded by polished, cherry-stained wood, as if awaiting a teenage aristocrat and his chums on a lark in the city.

A FEW NOTES ABOUT VIENNA
• Just about everyone speaks excellent English in hotels, restaurants, shops, cafés and on the streets.
• Buy a Wien-Karte (Vienna Card) coupon book with more than 210 discounts at  museums, sights, theaters, concerts, shops, cafés, restaurants, and free travel on Vienna's public transport system for 24, 48 or 72 hours (€13.90/€21.90/€24.90).   You can easily purchase them at your hotel and the Tourist Office at Albertinaplatz  at the Vienna Main Station or on-line.
• Gas stations are few and far between in the city, so gas up with discretion, and fill up before you return a rental car.
• Wi-Fi Internet access on the streets is spotty, but the cafés and shops are quite happy to link you to their hot spots.
• ATMs are abundant.
• Since service charges in hotels are included, minimal tips are recommended—a euro or two—for porters and chambermaids.
• The Viennese are music mad, so plan ahead for tickets to the opera and the endless series of Mozart and Austrian music concerts.  Check with your concierge.

    It’s now been nine years since The Ducasse Group opened Benoit New York, an offshoot of the Paris original opened in 1912 in the 4th Arrondissement at 20 Rue Saint-Martin, and now with another branch in Tokyo.  Through some ups and downs, but with only three chef changes, the New York operation has become a stalwart among the West Side of Manhattan’s French bistros and a mainstay of the Theater District.
    Now there is a new chef—Benoit’s first woman—a Parisian named Laëtitia Rouabah, previously at Allard in her hometown, who is carefully balancing traditional French bistro cooking with the evolution of modern cuisine.  She’s kept the majority of dishes that have always been on the menu at Benoit, from a textbook perfect onion soup gratinée ($16) and pig’s trotter (offered as part of the hors d’oeuvre) to an array of charcuterie.  Gone, at  least for now, are the lobster bisque, in favor of a creamy chestnut soup ($16), the quenelles of pike with sauce Nantua and the brandade. In their place are new dishes, including a seaweed striped bass with spelt and olive-lemon condiment ($40) and a silky roasted cod with a tart-sweet mango-and-passion fruit rougaille sauce ($36).  You also still get a  complimentary plate of puffy, cheesy gougères, and good bread and butter.
    The roast chicken, once only available for two, now may be ordered for one ($30, or $55 for the whole bird), and it is a very generous portion indeed, its skin golden and crisp, the interior juicy, the bird itself quite flavorful, as are the accompanying French fries in a paper cone.  No one ever leaves the table without polishing them all off.
    The  Alsatian tarte flambée is—hurrah!—still on the menu, a very crispy flatbread mounted with plenty of bacon, cheese and sweet caramelized onions ($14), while the flakey pâté en croûte ($19) dates back to an 1892 a recipe by Master Chef Lucien Tendret; it stays put on the menu for all the right reasons.  So, too, is a steak tartare with mesclun ($32),  chopped by hand for the ideal texture, chunky, not ground, and the savory seasonings never detract from the flavor of the good beef.
    It’s winter and cassoulet ($38) is on the menu, so it was requisite to order, but ,while it had good, dark, winey, rich flavors and plenty of pork, beans, sausage and duck confit, it lacked the traditional crusted top.  I defer to Larousse Gastronomique, which has two pages on the subject, noting in typical French academic style that way back in 1906 “the Grand États Genèreaux de la Gastronomie française” decreed what a cassoulet must contain:  “Above all, purists insist on breaking the gratin crust several times (seven times in Castelnaudary and eight times in Toulouse.”  For some reason, Benoit’s cassoulet has never had a crust that would hold up to a single blow of the spoon.
    Desserts are better than ever, including a baba doused with Armagnac and lavished with crème fraîche ($12) and an impeccably cooked hazelnut soufflé with grapefruit sorbet ($14), not too soft, not too firm, not too eggy.  Benoit’s superb tarte Tatin costs $24 because it is more than ample for two, even four, people, and it is much closer to the century-old Tatin sisters’ original recipe of cooked apples with plenty of butter on an inverted crisp pastry crust than to those flat apple tarts now found everywhere going without shame by the same name.  Benoit's profiteroles require fondue forks to dip  the puff pastries into hot chocolate ($22), but, since they are intended to be shared, they work and it's a good dessert.
    The wine list is extensive, especially for a bistro, with more than 40 Champagnes, 11 Chablis (the classic bistro wine), and plenty of regional wines, and prices are actually not bad by NYC standards. Cocktails run $14-$15.
  
     I regret ending this report with a description of what must be among the worst re-decoration of a once beautiful restaurant in memory—right up there with when the Grand Central Oyster Bar’s historic ceiling tiles were once  painted a ghastly aqua blue.  Benoit NYC did not look very much like the Paris original, but it was a joy to be in on its own: You’d enter the red-faced building through a revolving door, with a jaunty bar to the left, then be ushered into a good-
sized dining room done up in golden-blond wood, bright red banquettes, brass railings, tile floors, wall scones, mirrors and an enchanting trompe l'œuil cloudy blue sky above you.
    For reasons that escape me, everything but the red banquettes has been transformed into a monochrome room the color of Milk of Magnesia. The wood-paneled walls have been whitewashed, the bar is now almost denuded of color. (There is still jazz entertainment there.)  Even the once inviting façade has been painted bone white, suggesting a Greek estiatorio.  What once looked like a chic neighborhood bistro now looks like a drab dining room in a third-rate hotel in Alsace.  To paraphrase the French cliché, “Plus les choses changent, plus elles sont mauvaises.”
    The service staff, now under manager Christopher Charradeau, is quick on their feet and cordial, although on the night I was to meet a woman from one of NYC’s premier p.r. firms--the rez was under her name--I found that she’d first been seated, in a near empty dining room, at a table next to the kitchen door.  Pas bon.
    So, Benoit goes on serving the same fine bistro food with a new spark from a new chef who breathes new vitality into the kitchen, but in its new white dress, the dining room has lost much of its charm and bonhomie as a place to soak up that once tantalizing sense of true French joie de vivre.