Falstaff presents the best culinary addresses in the country with over 2,000 items in the new restaurant and inn guide.
They say that grumbling is our real national sport, and the discipline in which no one can really hold a candle to us. The outlook has indeed been rosier in the past, and the challenges for the catering industry have also become more diverse. But it wouldn't be Austria if we didn't roll up our sleeves behind the façade of cultivated pessimism and secretly, quietly, step on the gas. In this country, people get down to business and always know how to interpret crises as opportunities. This is impressively demonstrated by the new Falstaff Restaurant Guide; last year the 2,000 mark of listed restaurants was broken for the first time, and this trend continues unabated.
We can look forward to a breadth of gastronomic quality that not many European countries can boast. However, as we all know, the height is just as important as the breadth - and there is also a pleasing development here. While two 100-point restaurants, Steirereck and Amador, have been the standard-bearers of the highest culinary enjoyment in the country to date, another has been added this year.
Martin Klein at Ikarus Hangar-7 demonstrates consistency and excellence in such a way that we simply had to award the highest score. Cooking a completely new menu every month, a completely new style of cuisine at the highest international level - that is craftsmanship at its best. The service and the legendary wine cellar are also ideally equipped for these unique requirements. Congratulations on a world-class team performance!
Things are also going wonderfully elsewhere. Steyr, for example - in Upper Austria, where gastronomy is generally so vital - can celebrate Lukas Kapeller' s return to the stove. The exceptional chef dedicated himself to his father's business for a few years before making a brilliant comeback as a chef and restaurant operator at the turn of the year. The new restaurant named after him is the opening of the year for us: it's so upbeat, so relaxed, personal, almost intimate and delicious that we can't wait to experience more contemporary interpretations of really good restaurants.
And in the capital? We are delighted to have a new sommelier of the year - and a traditional dining culture that is also blossoming in the outer districts. Friedrike Duhme's wine list for nineOfive shows how a seemingly simple pizzeria can be deceptive. The young German has brought together treasures from near and far; allowing German winegrowers, but also Champagne and the Loire, to shine, and how elegantly the list plays between celebrated natural winegrowers and rare finds; all this shows real drive. And the Gasthaus Stern, far out in Simmering, is our pub of the year. A real model restaurant that upholds the tradition of Viennese cuisine, celebrates offal according to all the rules of the art, prepares the good old Wiener Schnitzel not just incidentally, but with seriousness and elegance, and shows at a nominally difficult address how great Viennese cuisine is across the board.
We, and hopefully you too, dear gourmet community, are delighted to see such promising signs of life on the scene. And we immodestly wish for more of them!
The ranking is based on the total number of points and the food rating.
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