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.

The hills are alive - with the sound of off key singing

Greetings from Salzburg, Austria. Just realised I wrote that out of habit - after starting every postcard I wrote tonight with that line...

Where to start, well I think starting at the very beginning would be very apt for this post, as it is a very good place to start (if that went over your head you may want to stop reading now).

From Zurich I headed to Vienna, but as I am headed back there tomorrow I will save that for another post. This is all about Salzburg. The city itself is quite beautiful.

Lots of nice, high vantage points to get a good look at the old city.

Like many cities in Europe, there is a love bridge - where you put the initials of yourself and the one you love on a lock, lock the key to the bridge and throw the key into the water, locking your love forever (might need to learn to scuba dive if you ever break up - that or invest in bolt cutters).

There also seems to be an obsession with unicorns in the sculpture in this town...

Salzburg as you may know is famous for three things. Mozart was born and raised here, this is where they filmed the movie The Sound of Music, and this is where the guy that created Red Bull is from. If anyone is interested, the Red Bull HQ looks like this

I headed off on a Sound of Music tour of Salzburg and surrounds (as you do). There were many important historical sights to see - like the gazebo. The one where Liesel sings "16 going on 17". Now it used to be, as I had hoped to do, that you could skip around on the seats and dance just like Liesel does in the movie. Sadly people kept falling off and breaking a leg, so now they enclose it in glass and keep you out. Bah humbug. Turns out Liesel herself did an ankle filming the scene and it wasn't as easy as it looks.

We visited the church where (spoiler alert!) the wedding is held at the end of the film.

One very creepy fact about the church - on the alter there are five mummified corpses on display. You can currently only see four (the fifth is covered by Jesus at Easter). Two men and two women. They were apparently gifts from Rome and have been there for about four hundred years. See if you can see them in this picture.

We also headed out to the lakes to see where some of the outdoor shots were done. How's this for a spectacular set for the opening shots of the film. Turns out this is the same village where Mozart's mother was born.

e also went to St Peter's church. It was this graveyard that was used for the scene where they hide from the Nazis at the end of the film.

Speaking of the nazis - interesting piece of trivia about the film - remember at the end when they are going up over the mountains to Switzerland? In reality, had they climbed in that exact spot they would have been toast. That was filmed on the Bavarian Alps (the border between Austria and Germany) and was in fact filmed only a short distance from Eagles Nest - aka Hitler's summer home. So they would have been realllly busted.

We learned a lot about the real Von Trapp family as well. Turns out one of the children they had after they got married was a missionary in PNG for many years (and adopted a son whilst she was there). We even went past the home of the real Von Trapp family. When they left Austria (for America in reality) Himmler actually took over the residence and went as far as to carve swastikas into the Von Trapps furniture. Apparently at one point Himmler and Hitler even hosted a little weekend getaway with Mussolini at the house during the war. The allied forces regained control of the house at the end of the war and in a strange twist two of the Von Trapp children (who fought as Americans in WWII) were sent there to help secure it and managed to convince the allies to hand it back to the family. These days it is a B&B and you can stay the night there. So, this is what the real thing looks like.

And this is the version from the movie (well, one of them, they used two villas for the film). The lake in front of this house was where they filmed the scene where the boat capsizes and Maria and the children end up in the water.

Throughout the entire tour the soundtrack was played in the van, and singing was strongly encouraged. I had some difficulty containing my laughter when our driver was very loudly, and badly, singing along to Do Re Mi, and when he got to the part about "once you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything" he totally flubbed the words. Repeatedly. Turns out Maria was wrong and you need to know more than the notes to sing along. Like the words.

There was also a customary trip to Mozart's house.

Creepily they have locks of his hair on display.

I have tried a few of the local dishes whilst here. Everything appears to be of a similar colour pallet - beige/brown. There has been asparagus with hollandaise sauce

Some apple strudel

And of course a schnitzel

Had to have the schnitzel tonight, could not bring myself to eat their fish selection after spying this on the kinder menu (not just any fish is being served, but NEMO!).

But then again they even shape their bread like cute animals here...

Back to Vienna tomorrow and I think that my first job when I get there is to buy some new socks...

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