There is hardly a street in Vienna—especially during the current holidays—where you will not be drawn in by a window festooned with pastries, chocolates and Christmas breads. Of course, those shops are always there in profusion, along with wine stores, butchers and outdoor markets that draw on the bounty of Austria itself. These specialties are enough to tantalize any visitor, but Vienna is very much an international city where you’ll find as many ZARA and H&M stores as you will department stores like Peek & Cloppenburg and vintage clothes at FLO.

        This global reach extends to the restaurant scene in Vienna, where it is as easy to find a pizzeria and sushi bar as it is a traditional Würstelstand or Gasthaus. Of the latter there are scores of places serving the old beloved dishes like Wiener Schnitzel and Tafelspitz. One of the prettiest and best known and very popular is Plachuttas Gasthaus (Walfischgasse 5), near the Vienna State Opera, with a good feeling of old Vienna (left).

        I found a new one to me in the trendy, youthful Mariahilf district lined with boutiques of every kind. We stayed at the uniquely furnished, 49-room boutique Hotel Josefine (Esterházygasse 33) with its 1896 art nouveau appointments, impressive pillared staircase and an abundant use of the color purple (right), with a delightful downstairs breakfast room.

       

Just around the corner is the charming, very cordial Gasthaus Steman (Otto Bauer-Gasse7), with outdoor tables in good weather. This serves very traditional, moderately priced, well prepared fare including a splendid, crispy fried Wiener Schnitzel (€24) and very hearty Gulasch with a plump Kaisersemmel roll (€10.50). Warming Rindsuppe (beef soup) comes to the brim of a white ceramic pot (€5.50), and a big platter of Eiernockerl (egg dumplings) with chopped greens makes both a hefty course or a side dish for two (€13). For dessert share the pancake-like Kaiserschmarren (€10.50).

        The owners of Steman also run the popular Café Jelinek across the street, where you may relax over coffee and pastries.

      A most unusual restaurant named Ludwig Van (Laimgrubengasse 22), run since 2015 by the ebullient, highly opinionated Oliver Jauk, is located on the ground floor of what was once Ludwig van Beethoven’s residence, now preserved. It has the feeling of a country tavern inside, and there is an extensive wine list that Jauk puts to good use for his tasting menus paired with wines (extra), which are always changing.        

     We began with an amuse of tȇte de veau with white beans and red onions, followed by a series of savory dishes (four course €79, five €89, six €99) like finely chopped beef tartare with smoked capers, radish and crouton; a consommé of mushrooms with egg yolk and truffles; cod in a rich, ivory-colored beurre blanc with sweet potato tinged with orange; delicious and tender veal with a buttery fondant of potatoes and wild broccoli; rosy lamb with spiced rice, fig and pistachio (which showed off the chef’s Turkish heritage); for dessert a Mont Blanc with candied chestnut and tangerine; and a delightful gingerbread with honey, apple and walnut. It is a sumptuous meal, but dishes are kept to a moderate size, so you might even indulge in the four varieties of local cheeses before your petits-fours.

     Jauk, who says he is more a marketer than gastronome, nevertheless knows his wines, and he’s to be trusted with his choices matched to his sophisticated take on modern European cuisine.

     In the mood for Italian food, my wife and I sought out La Tavolozza (Florianigasse 37), a pleasant looking trattoria with white tablecloths and candles (right). They serve a fine array of thin-crusted pizzas, and the antipasti include a skewer of scampi, tuna and scallops (€19); a bright orange carpaccio of tuna and salmon (€17); and soft polenta with calamari (€14). Pastas are colorfully presented, and we enjoyed penne with funghi porcini that were just coming into the season (€14) and potato gnocchi with a verdant pesto and arugula (€14).

    We made not the least dent in Vienna’s international offerings, and since one cannot eat Wiener Schnitzel every  night it’s good to know that a sudden hankering for anything from nigiri sushi to spaghetti alla carbonara is close at hand.

 

A few words about dining out in Vienna:

*  Just about every restaurant has a menu in English.

* Dress, as everywhere in Europe these days, is casual, but at the more traditional restaurants and cafés you will want to dress a bit conservatively, although bluejeans are everywhere.

* There is no smoking inside.

* Service is unfailingly courteous, and in the cafés very efficient.

* As for tipping, VAT tax and service are already included in the meal’s price, and many list a cover charge. But tipping is not requisite, and leaving more than 10%, if you wish, is generous.

 

 

         Since 1899 the name Fouquet’s has evoked images of cranberry red carpets, trimmed green hedges and broad red awnings on the east side of the broad Champs Élysées (below). Ever since the opening of the avenue’s first cinema in 1928, the hotel has drawn the movie crowd and since 1976 became host of the annual gala for the Cèsar Awards, France’s version of the Oscars. The hotel itself has been splendidly modernized in the past decade, but the restaurant has long retained its gorgeous mahogany paneling by Jean Royère, and has gone on to earn the prestigious Inventaire des Monuments Historiques. It’s always been an al fresco pleasure to dine on the terrace. By the way, Parisians know to pronounce the name as “Foo-ketts,” not “Foo-Kays.”
         As a self-described brasserie, Fouquet’s menu has always been predictably simple and solid, and now, with the consultation of Pierre Gagnaire (below), it has been transplanted into several branches around the world, last year opening in New York. The hotel’s location on a dark, narrow street in TriBeCa has none of the cachet of the Champs Élysée, but the similarity of décor and colors of the original is obvious. The walls are the same color wood, though not hung with movie star photos as in Paris. Time will tell.
         The table settings and table lamps are first-rate, the wineglasses thin, and the bread (which we had to ask for) was an excellent selection. The wine list, as you might expect, is very strong, but top heavy with bottles well over $100.
       The original's bar is in a separate room; here it is in the main dining room (left). Of course, New Yorkers being New Yorkers, it’s a lot louder than in Paris, and here unwarranted music is, alas, pumped into the dining room. Fouquet’s gets a fairly well-dressed crowd, but management does not enforce a dress code, so that a middle-aged lout was allowed to wear a baseball cap at the dinner table one evening.
         The prices are about the same in both cities, and, having dined a few times in the original, I found the preparation of the food in New York quite on a par, starting with the very best onion soup gratinée (below) I’ve ever had this side of the Atlantic ($24)—a perfect amalgamation of intense broth with slowly cooked sweet caramelization and suffused bread, copiously topped with three kinds of thick, bubbling, browned cheese. I could never return to Fouquet’s and fail to order this glorious classic of bistro cooking.        
     Within the same heritage are escargots with parsley and green velouté ($26), and a beef tartare with garlic chili paste and egg yolk sauce, accompanied by fat coin de rue (“street”) fries ($30/$45). Unique to New York is jumbo lump crabmeat seasoned with espelette pepper and chives set on a lime-tinged sweet avocado puree with thin wafers of radish ($42) —elements wholly complementary in buoying the flavor of the crab.
         Why can’t French chefs ever learn to restrain themselves from lavishing extraneous ingredients on pasta, as is never the case in Italy? The potato gnocchi at Fouquet’s were nicely made, but their flavor got smothered in pea puree, sugar peas, mint and lemon zest ($33).
         A generous one-and-a-half-pound lobster ($78) came as a hearty fricassée with sautéed spinach, roasted carrots, a Cognac-laced bisque and a white rice pilaf, the kind of dish the French excel in (left). Fouquet’s buys the best lamb from Elysian Fields, cooks it perfectly to one’s wishes, enriched with a Provençal reduction of juices and sided with Israeli couscous, herbed tabbouleh and crisp gaufrette potatoes. I should mention that one of the menu’s most popular items seems to be the Fouquet’s cheeseburger ($30), as ordered by all six twenty-something women at the adjacent table.   
       For desserts there are all the classics you’d hope for at a brasserie, including a plate of fat profiteroles lavished with chocolate ganache ($20), enough for two, and fragile, cream-filled millefeuille pastry with a variety of macerated autumn fruits ($16).
         Near the main dining room is the far more casual but very handsome Par Ici Café within a glassed-in garden, whose menu is largely vegetarian with salads and pastas but also with caviar, roast chicken ($29), salmon ($35) and butter-poached lobster ($46). 
         TriBeCa needs a fine dining room like Fouquet’s, though its prices are high for the neighborhood ($100 for sole meunière is the highest I’ve seen in New York). Filled as it was midweek when I visited, there are apparently enough people who find the ambience and vibrancy of the restaurant and its history very good reason to eat and drink there.

 

Dinner nightly; Brunch: Sat., Sun.