When I visited: October 2016

Location: Vienna

Rating in the Michelin Guide: Not rated in the Guide

Dining Owl Hoot rating: 2/5

What to wear: Could go casual

Ambience: Touristy, fun

Course of the meal: Sacher torte

If I could change one thing: Don’t forget the drinks

Review:

Sachertorte is a classic Viennese cake, like apple strudel (I was also going to say Viennese whirl but found out to my chagrin that this is an English creation!) and when you’re in Vienna, it’s the done thing to visit Hotel Sacher’s restaurant or cafe to sample one from the place that invented it. My partner Owl and I braved the long queue to do just that.

While the sachertorte itself was quite tasty, it was very dense and could easily be shared between two. The cafe offers various deals (such as an Aperol prosecco with the sacher torte, or pairing it with beef tartare) but we just asked for a sachertorte each with prosecco; unfortunately, we never got our prosecco. Given the sugar content of the cake that was probably no bad thing, although it wasn’t great from a service point of view. However, the staff were constantly busy trying to deal with the hordes of tourists and put rules in place such as us not being allowed to help ourselves to water from the tray next to us (I did wonder whether our prosecco was ‘forgotten’ as a punishment for us flouting this rule!).

I would recommend trying a sachertorte in Vienna but I’m not sure I would necessarily recommend this particular cafe; you could probably get better service and an equally nice cake elsewhere.