Black Bulls, Frankfurt, our Restaurant Review

The Barbarians are usually no great fans of steak houses. We’ve been to too many of them that take the label too literal and completely lack any imagination or cooking skill beyond the preparation of cows’ meat. However, the further North you get in Germany, the more steak houses there are, and Frankfurt is already sufficiently North for there to be plenty. Besides, we had heard very good things about Black Bulls and we immediately liked the fact that they don’t blindly focus on steak, but are also known for their finesse in preparing seafood.   For starters I opted for 12 Black Bulls Style Escargots with herb garlic butter gratin (€12.90), a mistake. The bread and butter served before the starter arrived, looked so unattractive I couldn’t be bothered to try it. The extremely tiny “Achat snails” were completely overpowered by the rich, creamy butter, which did not taste […]

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Cafe Englander, Vienna, our Review

We’ve just returned from our dinner at the well-known Cafe Englander. This little gem of the Viennese culinary scene, which has been around under the same owners for some twenty years, is not being mentioned in most tourist guides and retains a clientele of largely locals. It has a very relaxed, pleasant, down-to-earth vibe to it, not preposterous or glamorous like the grand cafés, but not without charm. The service was very friendly, quick, and professional from the moment we arrived half an hour before the time (it had been raining hard, we cancelled a plan to do some sight-seeing nearby beforehand and went straight to the restaurant). We were seated in the smoking area next to the bar, until our table became available just on time. The vibe in the smoking and bar area is more rustic, louder, and you feel more “in the middle of it all”, but […]

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Esterhazy Keller, Vienna – our Review

We have just returned from our pleasant stay at Esterhazy Keller, located inside the wealthy Esterhazy family’s Viennese pied-a-terre, to this day the largest privately owned palace in town. In the olden days the Esterhazys were famous for their lavish parties which took place in this building complex (not underground, but in the large first floor halls, of course). The dress code was very simple: come naked.     The emperor apparently was so pleased with these events that he rented a five-storey building just on the opposite side of the street, so that he would not have to go through the trouble of being driven to his main palace, ten minutes away, in his carriage. Being the boss of the second larges empire of earth at the time (after Russia) came with certain benefits.   Viennese have never been very big on beer. At some stage the emperor even […]

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Cafe Demel, Vienna, our Review

Opened in the 18th Century and re-designed later in a neo-baroque style, this “Imperial and Royal Chocolatier and Patisserie” is one of the best places for food we have been to in Vienna. Without a reservation, we had to wait for nearly half an hour before we were seated in one of the less glamorous second floor rooms, but it was worth the effort. From the moment we arrived the service made us feel welcome (which is not a given for big city places, certainly not for Vienna). We ordered coffee while we were pondering over the menu. In the end we decided we had to try their Viennese schnitzel for €25.90 (including side salad) and another one of their signature dishes: Huhn-Nudel-Briesauflauf (soufflé of noodles with chicken and sweet bread for €16.50).           The schnitzel was among the top three we’ve enjoyed. Large size, beautiful […]

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Brunch at Cafe Central, Vienna, our Review

We’ve just returned from brunch at Vienna’s famous Café Central, the mother of all coffee houses. It was our 2nd visit, the 1st being a few years back, but it still worked its magic on us. Founded in 1876, maybe the most important period for the Café was in the early 1910s. Back then, on the eve of WWI, Sigmund Freud, the writer Stefan Zweig, many other poets, and a whole army of later dictators and revolutionaries ranging from Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Tito, to Hitler and others, frequented this venue (or in some cases at least rocked up a few times). With the emperor’s physical and mental state in decline, his grip on government and state had started to fade, making Vienna the perfect hide-out. A year later the world would descend into its first all-out global war, but there were still a few cafes melanges and strudels to […]

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