after dinner sneeze

The first thing we did was go to a restaurant and EAT. We told drb to take us someplace unmistakably "Austrian". He did - we went to some restaurant that translates into "7 Star Bar" or something like that (named after the street it was on). What awaited on the menu was this bad boy you see before you: the "pork knuckle". It was huge - it took two of us to eat it. What we appreciated was the accompaniment which is apparently an Austrian attempt at "a well-balanced diet" (i.e. some shreds of lettuce and three slices of tomato).

This is a horrible picture, but it illustrates hearty Austrian cooking: "gnocchi" covered in cheese and bacon. What more do you need than starch, cheese, and bacon?

The next day, we went to Meierei which is a "cheese bar" that is associated with Steiereck, the only two-Michelin-star restaurant in Vienna. We were in for a ridiculous cheese brunch. drb reportedly had "cheese legs" by the time he was done eating. The clinical manifestations and pathophysiology of this disease have not yet been characterized, but I'll be sure to write up a case report for NEJM.

Fresh from the oven apple strudel. I'm not a huge fan of apples, but this was damn tasty.

drb detests fruit, so he went for the "milk strudel" and vanilla cream. I suspect that this is a contributing factor in the development of "cheese legs".

We did hit up a couple of Asian restaurants in Vienna. This was from our first one. It's apparently kimchi. At the time, I wondered why it was that it appeared so anemic and suspected that maybe the Austrians couldn't handle the heat, preferring instead garlic and vinegar. Apparently this "white kimchi" is a separate style of kimchi altogether and can be found in Korea along with normal kimchi! (Thanks for the 4-1-1 mom)

The Austrians do sushi as well ... but they're rice:fish ratio is a bit off (a LOT of rice). I want to say that nothing was at all "bad" or "wrong" or anything like that, but I nevertheless still think it's hilarious that we were in Austria ... eating sushi ... Of course, we did get to hang out with one of drb's super-cool physics friends at this meal, so it was totally worth it.

Zanoni and Zanoni gelato ... Frommer's says it's "the best". I'd say it was "good", but hoped there was some better gelato hiding somewhere else ...

The "bread basket" at Cafe Westend: croissant, hard pretzels, and a piece of jerky ... totally expected, right?

Some sort of apricot pastry from Naschmarkt. The Austrians LOVE apricot, apparently. Overall, the pastry was "meh" - too much apricot!

Also from Nashmarkt: the best danish that g has ever had!! It's not like it was some sort of novel blow-your-mind, redefine-danishes-forever danish. But the strawberry filling was REAL strawberry, the dough was soft with a light crust, nothing was mushy, nothing was over-sweetened. Basically, it was a danish that lacked all of the normal danish-related flaws - "best ever danish" by default!

"Hot dogs" in Vienna are different than those here. Over there, they use REAL rolls (like Amaroso rolls). They stab these rolls with a heated metal spike, and shoved into it a sausage of your choice (e.g. kielbasa). It was approximately 87 times better than a normal hot dog.

This sucky picture was to remind me to tell the world that there is gelato in Vienna better than Zanoni and Zanoni. Wherever the crap drb took us on this day has awesome flavors (that green is green tea!) and superb texture. Very nearly as good as capo giro!

Cafe Ritter's "chocolate pancake dessert" (which I ate for breakfast). It's like crepes and nutella (and some fruit). It was so frickin delicious (although probably not that different than eating straight-up nutella).

We were told there was an awesome gelato place right next to Zanoni and Zanoni that was superior to Zanoni and Zanoni. So we set out to look for it. We couldn't find it. We were so hungry for ice cream (it was hot outside) that we no choice but to eat at ... Zanoni and Zanoni - BLAST! It wasn't bad, but let's just say that the "chicken shnitzel sandwich" is precisely the same as those chicken patties you could find in any cafeteria across the US.

This picture is to remind me to tell you of a restaurant called "Kontrapunkt". They do this thing where you sit down and courses will start coming out (which you have no say in what comes except to specify food restrictions/allergies), and then you tell them to stop at whatever course you're full. We lasted four courses (this was #1 - some sort of meat carpaccio), but it soon got really dark outside, so I'll spare you the other pictures. It was a wonderful time though! I liked the element of surprise. So if you ever go to Vienna, check out this restaurant (and don't ever eat the non-gelato food at Zanoni and Zanoni). The owner of Kontrapunkt came out and chatted with us some throughout the meal - he is a SUPER nice guy. He showed up later at the end of the meal and said "yea, so we have an unlabeled bottle of sweet wine in the cellar - it's got to be at least 30 years old ... you want some". Yes we did ... it tasted like a really caramelly Tokaji (Hungarian sweet wine). Not too shabby!