a taste of austria on a good friday.

Wiener Kaffeehaus
148 Neil Road
Tel: 6226 3148
Website: http://www.wienerkaffeehaus.com.sg/

It felt like a Sunday today. Maybe cos it rained a lot and made me feel lazy. Anyways, D & I spent a whole lot of quality time together today, something which we haven't got much time to do recently. Lunch was rather interesting today cos D brought me to a Viennese coffehouse. He read about this place on the Sunday Times last week and had been bugging me since about going there for lunch one day.

Wiener Kaffeehaus actually opened only about 3 weeks ago and is the first Viennese cafe on our island. What's interesting about the place is that they have their very own coffee roaster in the premises, a first for a cafe. Besides the coffee, they serve up an adequate range of Austrian food such as the Wiener Schnitzel, Cordon Bleu and Wiener Saft Gulasch which is what I had.














I wanted to order the Wiener Schnitzel initially but ended up trying the stew cos it was pouring outside and I felt like having something warm and comforting. Was quite happy about my eventual choice. Although a tad oily, the stew was rich and spicy (as in herbs kind of spicy). The beef was tender whilst the bread dumpling was delicious when soaked in the gravy. The bread dumpling was quite interesting actually cos I've never had it. It's this doughy ball that's a little chewy. It doesn't really taste like fluffy bread, you'd probably have to try it to know what I'm talking about.

D ordered a simple Roast Beef sandwich for himself. There's nothing much to shout about cos a sandwich is still a sandwich. The difference though, is that they're pretty generous on the amount of roast beef used. As simple and normal as it is, it was still quite appetising. We also had their speciality, Viennese coffee. Frankly, I'm not much of a coffee drinker so I can't comment if it was good or not. All I know is that the double espresso that we both had had this sour aftertaste. If you are a coffee connoisseur, let me know if sour is good or bad.













Besides the food, I also really liked the atmosphere. I've never been to Vienna so of course, I have no idea how a Viennese coffeehouse should look. However, it being located in a corner of Chinatown and in a converted old shophouse added a quaint charm. I also really loved the cosiness of the place. It was pouring when we left and I guess we would have stayed if not for the crowd coming in.

Having said that, the one bad thing was the service. The food took forever to arrive. D finished his sandwich even before my meal came. What's more, we weren't the only table that experienced this. The waiter was really 'blur' and kept making excuses that the kitchen was in a messy state today. He even agreed with the table next to us that the soup wasn't nice cos of the disorganised kitchen! Good thing the atmosphere was good and the people were nice, otherwise I think a lot of people would have been unhappy. I guess it being a 3 week old cafe, we can't really blame them for the occassional hiccups. All it needs now is a little fine tuning and it'd put its potential to good use.