Three Must Try Foods in Vienna and Where to Find Them

My Three Favorite Food Spots in Vienna

This is an unplanned part 3 of my guide to student life in Vienna. I’ve talked about how to navigate the U-bahn, and where to study, but how can we find good and cheap meals?

Of course, there’s the classic McDonald’s or Five Guys, but if you’re looking for the authentic Viennese cuisine, what real people eat on the regular, I have three words for you: kasekrainer, schnitzel, and kebab!

KEBAB

It’s hard to beat a good kebab on a cold night, chatting up the guy working at the stand with broken German and a couple English key words. But it’s an experience that I think every student should have. I live at the Social Hub, near Praterstern, and right across the street is a “Two Bros” Doner Kebab stand. 

Kebab can be made of several types of meat, but the one across the street is chicken. It rotates on this giant spinny thing (I don’t know how else to describe it), and it creates a nice golden crisp all around. 

My go-to order is the Kebab Box, which comes with fries or rice (in German, that’s “mit pommes” or “mit reis”), and a couple other things. The “chef”, if you can call him that, tosses on lettuce, tomatoes, onions, yogurt sauce, salt, and some spicy powder. For the low price of €6.50, you can get a full meal that’ll last you for at least several hours. And, if you make friends with the guy at the stand, you might even get some extra meat on top!

I highly recommend you try out a doner kebab at some point in Vienna. It’s a classic, beloved European food, and in Austria, it’s such a common quick meal for students and families alike, so give it a shot! I’m sure you’ll like it.

SCHNITZEL

Now, besides Kebab, which is more Middle Eastern than it is European, the classic dish of Austria is Schnitzel. That breaded, salty, perfectly fried piece of chicken or veal is the perfect way to end a long day. There are so many famed restaurants in the area, but I’ll point you to Salm Brau.

Salm Brau is close to the Belvedere Gardens, making it a perfect place to visit after walking through the palace or the area. They also have a wide selection of beers (they are a brewery), they have an outdoor terrace, and they have a nice selection of Austrian food. So even if you don’t want schnitzel, you can find goulash, meat plates, the such. 

However, I’d recommend you to try the Veal Schnitzel, just once. Yes, you can get chicken too, but the classic Austrian recipe is using veal (that’s baby cow!). Trust me, I’ve had it twice, and it’s delicious. The traditional dish comes with a side salad of potatoes and a lemon to squeeze, and Salm Brau also tosses in a thing of cranberry sauce. It’s a bit more expensive than the chicken, since it’s a better, more valuable part of meat, but I think you should try the real recipe once. Though, schnitzel is eaten so much, since it’s the famous food of Austria, so you might get tired of schnitzel, which is why you should try:

KASEKRAINER

If I had to bring one food back to the U.S., it would be Kasekrainer, no doubt. Found at cute Wurstelstands across Vienna, kasekrainer is an Austrian speciality sausage. It’s mostly meat sausage, but it has little cubes of cheese inside. When heated up, it becomes a wonderful mix of meat, cheese, and bread on the outside. You can ask for ketchup, mustard, and spicy powder if you’d like.

You might not even be a sausage person, but trust me, you’ll want to keep eating Kasekrainer once you try it. It most frequently is ordered in a bun, with a piece of bread on top. I get a Kasekrainer almost every other day, whether it be a quick lunch or a warm dinner (it’s getting cold here in Vienna!). 

My favorite stand is called Zum scharfen René, and it’s right across from the IES Abroad Schwartzenbergplatz Spaces classroom. It’s perfectly cooked, with just the right level of frying, and the cheese is always hot and melting, which is so perfect when the outside temperature is below 50 degrees and your breath is condensing into vapor! The guy there is super friendly, speaks English, and always picks a good sausage. 

I’m urging you to just try it once. It’s the Viennese Austrian specialty, it’s a classic food, even for Vienna specific dishes. And you’ll look and feel like a real local, biting into that warm sausage standing outside the shop. 

Anyways, those are my three favorite foods and where you can find them in Vienna! Of course, this is just the start of the list. I’d also point you to Restaurant Hu or Ebi Ramen for asian food. Restaurant Hu was so good that my friend who visited from London said he still thinks about it to this day. But I digress. Please, try them out, you won’t regret it!