If the beating heart and soul of breakfast is a pleasant and sustaining beginning that sets the tempo for the rest of our day, then the capital of Austria must take breakfast very seriously indeed. Sedate, quiet Vienna starts its morning gently and elegantly, and, honestly, the rest of the day pretty much follows suit.
On the whole, travelers will be hard pressed to find big breakfasts (towering stacks of American pancakes or massive tankards of coffee) in this former hub of Habsburg decadence. As the entire city of Vienna seems sedate and settled in the extreme, visitors are more likely to find breakfast offerings that lean towards rich dark coffee, pastries, an egg done perfectly and elegantly presented, and perhaps a bit of fruit.
That said, in most hotels visitors will find the usual ridiculously bountiful European breakfast buffet. As always, these thoughtful offerings cater to a wide range of palettes with a choice of protein options (eggs and meats), cheeses, yogurt, muesli, coffee, pastry, fresh fruit, croissants and other bread choices, as well as butter, jam, marmalade, and honey. Apricot is also a big thing in Vienna/Austria, so it’s not uncommon to find this in pastries or as the dominant sweet spreadable offered on a breakfast plate.
Café Landtmann
On our first day in Vienna, we were scheduled to visit many of the culinary and cultural landmarks bequeathed to the city by the Habsburgs and their now defunct empire.
Before embarking on our tour of the Hotel Sacher and Vienna’s other pastry and cake dens of fine repute, as well as numerous museums and galleries, we were lucky enough to stumble upon the venerable (established in the late 1800s) Café Landtmann, where we had a leisurely late morning breakfast.
As it was early February, we were seated indoors in a heated solarium, and remarked that when the warmer weather arrived, breakfast on Café Landtmann’s outdoor patio would be glorious. And, indeed, even without the al fresco element, our breakfast was divine. We sat with a scattering of other diners who likewise relaxed with delicious rich dark coffee and took their time reading the paper. My soft-boiled egg arrived cooked to 6-minute perfection and in a glass. It was presented along with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a bowl of cut fruit. The bread/roll was a tad underwhelming and not up to the rest of the presentation. But the rich butter compensated for any deficit.
The almost-chocolaty-thick coffee was presented in a Turkish pot, accompanied by a small white dish and what looked to be a single cube of Turkish delight on a skewer set atop the coffee cup. My inner breakfast detective soon grasped that the sugar skewer is used to sweeten the coffee, and the white dish is then used to hold the drippy sugar cube. And, sure, if you want to nosh on the now-coffee-flavored soft sugar cube, the Viennese are very polite and would never say anything negative about it (to your face).
Cake & coffee/Pastry for Breakfast
As the ancestral home of Sacher Torte, that blissfully dense and chocolatey cake with the perfect hit of fruit and a splash of cream on top (that was invented and perfected at the Hotel Sacher in the heart of Vienna), it should come as no surprise that cake, pastries, and coffee are pardonable sins at almost any time of day in this corner of the world.
With that in mind, breakfast in Vienna was, on two occasions, mainly coffee and some form of sweet found at a local coffee shop. Protein in the form of eggs, sausage, or thin sliced meats was usually available, but definitely played second fiddle to the sweets, at least amongst the traveling set (tourist crowd).
Outside the Hotel Sacher 
At the Hotel Sacher 
Original Sacher torte (Wien) with Einspänner 
The Original Sacher Torte (Hotel Sacher Vienna) 
The Original Sacher Torte
Viennese Style
The thing that most struck me from that very first morning in the Austrian capital was the serenity of the busy city. Despite loads of visitors, traffic, and bustling activity, there was precious little noise, and no pervasive sense of urgency or anxiety (which tends to build up in metropolitan areas as people rush about and attend to their important business). It’s not that there was any less importance to peoples’ lives, there just seemed to be a collective lack of stress about it. This was an attitude that carried over through all aspects of our trip, and was felt (or, more to the point, not felt) on a daily basis throughout the city. Mercifully, it also extends to the refined and restrained, yet deeply satisfying, offerings at the Viennese breakfast table.
So, for anyone looking for a charmingly calm and quiet place to get away, I cannot recommend Vienna with its treasure trove of culture, sedate ways in almost everything, and penchant for sweet treats highly enough.
And your breakfast will be elegant enough to please you without feeling fussy or overstuffed.
Cop Cachet: Almost none. Viennese style and formality, while not off-putting is definitely not down home charming and folksy.
Mug Meter: Almost none. See above.
text and photos by Glenn D. Kaufmann
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1. Personal Interviews and experience
