Have you ever dreamed about the juicy steak, bigger than your plate? If yes then do not miss the iconic restaurant Figlmüller, where they fry their Wiener Schnitzel for over 100 years. Anyway, their version has pork meat – tenderloin, which is less sinewy than veal and doesn’t puff up during frying. Firstly, the piece of meat goes through some hard pounding with a mallet until the schnitzel measures 30 centimeters in diameter. This procedure guarantees thin crispy consistency. The same important is also frying in the lard, which gives much better results than frying oil.
Figlmüller reservation
Anyway, for a seat in Figlmüller, you need a reservation, due to the high frequency of people who wants to try their legendary steak. The restaurant is neat, and its location is in the cellar which was in use before. First, we tried Viennese soup made from potatoes, carrots, and porcini. The soup was very strong, with a nice creamy texture and seasoned just right.
Great Wiener Schnitzel
Ian’s main dish was, of course, Figlmüller Wiener Schnitzel with potato salad and lamb’s lettuce on the side. His steak was a really very good fried steak. It was juicy, crispy on the outside, and still soft on the inside. The potato salad was made with pumpkin seed oil. It was slightly sweet and was a perfect combination for this steak, especially after we squeezed a little lemon juice on top of the fried steak.
My dish was also a classic – Viennese boiled beef in the pot. This one is served in beef stock with some vegetables, with eggy chive sauce and apple horseradish on the side, and roasted potatoes mash. The beef was great, I would only leave it to boil a little bit more, so it would be softer. The soup was very strong and delicate, and it was a good addition to the meat. Eggy chive sauce wasn’t so good, and a bit of salt was missing in it. You couldn’t taste the chives at all, only egg yolk and some cream, on the other hand, the apple horseradish sauce was perfect. Just right sweet and sour with that little kick of freshly grated horseradish. Some more chef’s attention needed the roasted potatoes mash, which can be a lot tastier than that one. Ours was dry and tasteless which is probably because of huge portions cooked in advance and then left on the stove.
Conclusion
The service we had wasn’t even close to what we got used to in Vienna. Maybe our waiter was tired after a long day due to many tourists that wanted to try their renowned dishes, but that was not something to be bothered with. What annoyed us was that the waiter was cocky and made it clear that the tip we gave him was too low. Well, sorry my friend, but for serving some “Schnitzel” and “Kartofel Salat”, I really can’t tip you the same as I do for high service, where we spend hours instead of 25 minutes. Anyway, lunch like ours will cost you about 50 USD, which is not cheap, but hey you are in Vienna ;)