Kleines Café – Vienna

The aptly-named “Little Café” is a charming institution on the lovely Franziskanerplatz, with table seating outside for the good weather. Inside, small tables crowd up against upholstered benches and mirrored walls. It really seems busier in the evening, when there are crowds drinking beer and wine, but on the morning we were there they did do the best coffee we’d had so far in Vienna (admittedly, that wasn’t actually saying so much – the Viennese may have had Europe’s earliest coffeehouses, but they don’t seem to have mastered the art of milk yet). A charming ambience, though, and we were pretty much the only non-Austrians – one gentleman in full Tyrolean fig stopped by for his morning coffee while we were there.

Franziskanerplatz 3

Café Tirolerhof – Vienna

Another Viennese institution: looks a little tawdry and run-down these days, but I found that added to the charm. It was quiet and pleasant in the afternoon, with old Viennese men and women reading the paper outnumbering tourists. Once again, the coffee is not superb, but it beat Café Central. Go here for your dose of Viennese past glories.

8 Führichgasse, Vienna, Austria

Café Central – Vienna

Supposedly a Viennese institution, and it certainly is pretty, with faux gothic vaults and brocaded benches. But the coffee is dire, and where it once might have been the haunt of Austrian intellectuals, it is now a nasty tourist trap. Our waiter turned very assertive when the bill came along and made it damn clear that we had better leave a tip. Boorish behaviour unworthy of his institution – no one else in Vienna ever did that to us, and as a result, everyone else got tipped properly.

Go halfway round the block instead, and find the shopping gallery that runs right through it (from Herrengasse to Freyung) – there is a delightful small Paris-style café which is far more charming.

Les Deux Salons

A classic Parisian brasserie, they call it, except that it’s round the corner from Trafalgar Square – does that not disqualify it from being Parisian? Or is, as the French would surely have it, that being Parisian is an esprit, not a geographical condition? Never mind. They are certainly trying very hard to look the part – the décor is very fin-de-siècle, and not the last siècle, but the one before that; dark wood, old lamps on gilt poles, faded mirrors, the bread served in red, upturned baskets that look like the sort of hats one sees in sixteenth-century paintings of religious dignitaries. It looks very much like the kind of place that would have turned away George Orwell in Down and Out in London and Paris, like Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère. I screw my eyes half-shut and see the room bustling with arrogant bankers and impoverished young men of high sensibilities, characters from the pages of E.M.Forster.

Enough of the décor. N1 was lured here by the promise of the snail and bacon pie, and I must say, for a so-called starter, it was a generous pie well-studded with the little de-shelled gastropods (surely something with the name gastropod was made to be eaten – must not gastronomy be the art of eating snails?). Also starting, lamb sweetbreads were accompanied by mushroom-filled vol-au-vents. Nice enough, sweetbreads and vol-au-vents, but didn’t seem to do anything for each other.

We shared a big main of Andouillette de Troyes. I haven’t had an Andouillette that smelled so, shall we say, rustic (in the sense that some fine Burgundies can also be very euphemistically rustic) since I was last in Lyon some years ago. A big, fat, smelly sausage interlaced with the undulations of wandering intestines, with a beurre blanc sauce and frites on the side. For those who dislike tripe, this dish might be a repulsive mystery, a weird gastronomic challenge destined for Japanese gameshows, but at the end of our little pre-theatre the score was very decidedly N+N: One, Challenging French Sausage: Nil.

I started off liking the ambience, but somehow it waned; by the end of lunch, it had all come to seem somewhat overwrought. Les Deux Salons treads a fine line between real charm and feeling like Café Rouge on a mission to conquer the upper end of the market.

www.lesdeuxsalons.co.uk

Château Musar Overview

By far Lebanon’s finest red wine; made with a Bordeaux-meets-the-South blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cinsault, Carignan, Grenache and Mourvèdre, in the hotter vintages it can come out a bit Californian before veering off to a very hot-fruit animalistic typically Southern French style, although I find it often reminds me of right-bank Bordeaux. It is made in a natural style, and there can be quite a high degree of bottle variation making tasting more difficult!

Château Musar 1993

Paler than the 94 and the 95, with a tawny rim. A classic Musar nose (stewed fruit, volatile acidity, meaty), but on the lighter, more mature side, with the spice notes of cinnamon and clove very much to the fore (very Middle eastern), just a hint of smoke and leather. Musar can be very long-lived, but this is showing its age a bit more than the 94 and the 95.

Château Musar 1994

A lovely light garnet colour with a faded, bricking rim. Fairly intense, sweet, plummy fruit, with a touch of liquorice and the trademark Musar volatile acidity. Seems to straddle Old World and New World flavours: “redcurrants in cough mixture” says N1, while I tend more towards “my mother’s strawberry jam”. Not quite as heavy or animalistic as the 95, but still gamey and powerful. Evocative of right bank Bordeaux in a hot year. Still has plenty of lasting power.

Château Musar 1995

Lebanon’s finest, notably improved since I last had a bottle of this vintage a year ago. Volatile acidity, attenuated red fruit, Worcester sauce, old wood, and animal hair come in a full-frontal blast. The palate is a powerful mix of still quite sweet (pushing rotten) fruit, cutting acid, and dusty wood.

Given space for a bit of breathing, there is rotten apples, cinnamon, coffee and a clarifying note of cloves. (In the bottle I had last year, the cinnamon was almost as strong as to evoke mulled wine; this time, not so much.)

Last year’s bottle struck me as being like a mature Californian Cabernet but I repudiate that comparison now; now it seems much more like a particularly animalistic right-bank Bordeaux. The star vintage of the 90s, in just ahead of the also excellent 1994. Keep.

Château Musar 1999

Still quite a vivid, purple rim. Leather, baked black fruits and cinnamon, but less volatile acidity than many a Musar. A hint of a Graves-like ashtray note. The fruit note is not as baked as in some vintages, perhaps a bit more raspberry than stewed plum. Not as dense or as intense as some vintages (the very powerful 95), but a big hit of acid at the back of the palate. The smelly, animalistic aromatics I love in Musar have yet to make a big appearance, and I wonder to what extent they will do so. Good, but not a historical vintage. Still, other tasting notes suggest it may be the best vintage since the 1995.

Château Musar (Blanc) 2000

Rather an amber colour, with orange highlights; in the shop, I squinted and wondered if it was a rosé.

Made from a mix of the Merwah (related to Sémillon) and Obaideh (related to Chardonnay) grapes, but the style is pure Bordeaux Sémillon style: waxy, preserved lemons with a mix of old and new oak. Austere and beautifully integrated, I imagine it could live for next to forever in the cellar.

Château Musar (Rosé) 2004

A bit of the worst of both worlds on the bouquet; the lemony, Sémillon quality of the Musar Blanc but without the Blanc’s intensity (austerity), and a suggestion of Pinot Noir-esque strawberries. We’d heard great things about the Musar rosé, that it actually shows development; but after a couple of hours with it between the fridge and our glasses we weren’t convinced. However, when we returned to polish it off the following day we found ourselves arguing about whether it was now more apricot (N1) or more orange (N2), so worth a whirl after all.