Fine dining - Vienna style

Yeah I know, I've been slack. I could make excuses, I have had a rotten cold for the last 9 days, but at the end of the day I was just having a little too much fun to find the time to write (not that I don't love you all, I just love Eurovision more). So now, here at home, I am playing catch up on all the things I'd like to present at Show & Tell.

As the loyal readers among you would know, one of the finer Eurovision traditions that we have developed over the years is picking the top restaurant in the host city and having a pre-Eurovision lunch on the Friday. Lunch generally stretches well into the afternoon, and this year was no different.

So what is the top restaurant in Vienna? It is Steirereck located in the Stadpark. As of today it is number 16 in the world. I say today because the list is due for it's annual update in about 12 hours, so that could change. The theme of Steirereck is to take Austrian food to a fine dining level.

So, what did we eat? Well it started well with a pisstake of Austrian food labeling laws. In Austria, restaurants have to declare (by law) a list of allergens in all the dishes on their menu. To start the meal, the team here have developed a tasting platter that singles out each of the major allergens. For example, if you are allergic to soy you can eat every dish brought out except the one highlighting the soy allergen because it doesn't cross over into any other dish. Basically, they are gloating to people without allergies the awesome flavours you can eat, but other suckers with an allergy miss out on. No allergies at our table, just a free for all to try all the dishes.

By far the most inventive of these was the oyster allergy. The oyster was frozen and then finely shaved, making it a kind of oyster snow cone...

The nut allergy was pretty cool as well and was a liquid walnuty foam.

Next up the 7 course tasting menu started in earnest. For each course there were two options. For me, course 1 was nasturtium root, aubergine, almond and radish. This was a good start to the meal.

Next up was a salad course of sorts - mine was redondo courgette and chanterelles with buckwheat and plum. Not a lot of big flavours in this dish, felt very...meh.

The following course was by far the most disappointing for me. I only managed a few bites. the sourness of the dish was quite overwhelming and left you with nothing else to taste. I will say though, the speck (backfat from a mangalitza pig - so, a kind of bacon) that was pressed for 12 months with lavender and basil was pretty awesome. The dish was young artichokes with flowering chard, hemp and speck.

Next up was the fish course. I chose the alpine salmon with white asparagus, sprouts and lemon savoury. The salmon actually came from Austria and may have been the nicest piece of salmon I have ever had. The lemon and thistle mayo was also a bit of a superstar. Could have eaten a vat of the mayo.

For the meat course, I chose the veal tongue and sweetbreads with romanesco, canihua and whiskey. Can't go wrong with a whiskey sauce. The volume of broccoli in this dish was a little over the top though.

Next up was the cheese course. There were two choices - a fresh cheese, or the cheese trolley. The trolley was the most impressive I have ever seen. So jaw dropping I failed to remember to take a picture because I was so distracted by the pretty, tasty, smelly cheese. Riin however opted on the soft cheese, which was served on a strainer. A giant strainer. This was not a tiny dessert.

Next up was dessert. We were presented with a platter of what we were told were traditional Austrian desserts - which included deep fried apple rings and creams of various flavours. There was also a little sweet cheese 'donut' which was potentially the best thing I ate all day.

My dessert was the blossom with honey, pollen and passion fruit. When it was served a waitress came over with a tray of perfume bottles and asked me to select a perfume to spray on my dessert (huh?). I opted for the orange one expecting a sprtiz or two. A full minute later my poor dessert was soggy with perfume, and my ice cream had started to melt, but the table smelt amazingly citrisy.

So, the verdict? I really felt the portions were off for a fine dining tasting menu. Everything just seemed far too big. More than half the courses i had lacked something in the flavour department as well. In the past at other top restaurants I have been served dishes I didn't p[particularly like, but you could at least appreciate where the chef was going with the dish. I didn't get that here. I know this sounds snobby, but at this price point you want something a little more creative and with far more flavour.

The actual restaurant itself is also quite sterile. There were some interesting design features, but I couldn't quite understand why the waiters were in lovely suits and their female colleagues were dressed in grey sacks that were reminiscent of a dystopian future in a young adult film (think the Abnegation in Divergent).

I'll leave you with this - after lunch I headed back to the hotel to get ready for the night's show to find housekeeping had a little fun in the bathroom.