The wealth of Asian restaurants in Vienna was initially surprising to us.  But a cabbie explained that Austrian’s don’t really go out to eat Austrian food, when they eat out they are seeking different flavors and Asian food is hot right now.

Ginger and Spice

Ginger and Spice is a small family run pan-Asian restaurant in the Northern part of the central Vienna, well of the beaten tourist path (Nußdorfer Str. 30).  The menu has some good vegan options, including a vegan dumpling and an excellent stir-fried vegetables and noodles dish.  The amazing pork dumplings were very juicy, taking a big bite of one of these dumplings can yield an explosion of pork juice.  My advice is to bite a small hole in the wrapper and suck the juice out before you bite into the dumpling.  The pork dumplings came with a delicious green spicy, cilantro infused dipping sauce.  The vegan dumplings, filled with mushrooms and tofu, were good but not in the same league as the pork dumplings.  All of the dumplings are made in-house. 

Again this restaurant is off the tourist beaten path, but there are a few other cool things in this area, including the Vegan X bakery and Mad Titan Comics, which specializes in older US comics.   

Mr. Du Ramen&Bar

This was the best restaurant we went to in Vienna, and we ended up having three meals here.  Mr. Du’s sells a miso broth vegan ramen that is off the charts good and has an excellent grilled BBQ eel over rice.  They also make their own Shichimi tōgarashi spice blend that is amazing, it tastes like it has black pepper, salt, something citrus and maybe MSG added to the usual mixture of red chili powder, Sansho and sesame seeds. They serve their Shichimi Togarashi on the edamame starter and at first were a little hesitant to provide us with some to put in the miso ramen.  But on our second and third visits they gave us a bowl of the spice powder as soon as we put in our ramen order in.

The pan-fried home made meat buns were delicious.  The buns were served with bonito slivers on top of the buns, which is genius.  The pork and greens dumpling filling, with the fried caramelized bottom of the wrapper and the salty dried tuna slivers was an amazing bite of food.  This was so good, I have to ask why haven’t I seen this combination before?  The vegan dumplings seemed like the standard Japanese restaurant, bright green wrapper veggie dumplings, nothing special.

Mr. Du’s is right near the main old city tourist area of Vienna at Biberstraße 4.

Matcha Komachi

This is a Japanese restaurant with several location in Vienna, we went to the one in the old city area of Vienna (Hoher Markt 8-9/5/2).  This was a pretty standard Japanese restaurant, the type you can find in most major cities worldwide, that sells edamame, Takoyaki, dumplings, a selection of sushi rolls, and a few udon and ramen options.  The veggie dumplings were deep fried and almost certainly of the frozen, food service variety.  I swear I have purchased these frozen in a bag, at my local H-Mart. They were crispy and crunchy and mild and savory.

The one reason to come back to Matcha Komachi was the house made Onigiri (triangle rice balls).  I had the excellent Yakiniku onigiri, which was a roast pork shoulder rice ball. 

Lin’s Veggie Dumplin’

This vegan dumpling spot is in the Neubaugasse neighborhood (Neubaugasse 70), which is a cool shopping area with some good record and comic book stores.  The restaurant is tiny, with maybe five tables, and you order at the register.   The dumpling choices are: kimchi dumplings; coconut curry potato and vegan chicken dumplings; wild garlic dumplings; cabbage and carrot veggie dumplings; and mustard greens dumplings.  They also have three kinds of bao, noodle soups and rice bowls.  We got an order of kimchi dumplings, a veggie bao and the mixed serving of ten dumplings.  All of the dumplings were steamed and unfortunately the mixed plate of dumplings was overcooked.  The kimchi and coconut curry potato and vegan chicken dumplings were really tasty, each delivered on its promised flavor profile, and I would get them again. But the flavors of the other dumplings all blended together and were unmemorable, perhaps because the overcooking.  The dumplings were served with a lot of diced vegetables and leafy green garnishes on top, which were kind of distracting.  The veggie bao, filled with mushrooms and soy protein, was also quite good.   

---

Some other eating adventures in Vienna.

Zwölf Apostelkeller is a very cool beer cellar in the old city with brick walls and vaulted brick ceilings. It is truly a cellar that goes down underground for at least three floors of restaurant space. It has a good selection of beer, wine, and liquor and the Austrian food classics. We got the Burenwurst (pork sausage) which is the single thicker sausage below and the Debrecziner (spicy sausage) which is the thinner link sausage. Both were served with mustard and horseradish. The spicy Debrecziner was so good we came back for a second visit just to get that sausage.

Street Food Vienna has lots of kiosks that sell grilled sausage. The sausages are generally a ~12-inch long pork sausage and most kiosks sell around six varieties. The sausage is served inside a long hoagie style roll. The roll is turned into hollowed out tube by jamming it length-wise onto a long spice and then the sausage is inserted into the hoagie tube with some mustard lube. If you are in Venna I recommend you try some street sausage. In December Vienna also has lots of Christmas markets that mainly sell food. I saw several stalls selling a grilled potato patty that is served slavered in a garlic sauce. Very tasty.