Restaurant Konstantin Filippou
Phone: +43 1 5122229
Address: Dominikanerbastei 17, 1010 Wien, Austria

This was one of the very few trips for which I didn’t plan where to eat. My boyfriend is from Austria and it only made sense for me to take the back seat and let him lead our culinary adventure. Our first lunch in Vienna was at Restaurant Konstantin Filippou, a one Michelin star restaurant where Chef Konstantin Filippou takes a purist approach and really enhances the quality of the ingredients that Austria has to offer.

We went for the 33 Euro 3 course “Businesslunch” (plus dessert for 6 Euros), which is a real steal. Not cheap by Austrian standards but for us New Yorkers it was an unbelievable deal. It is a complete omakase style meal and it seems they change their menu daily, based on what is seasonal and available.

Lunch service on this day was quite slow and there were only 3 other groups of customers. The space looked more of like a cafe, which kind of gave it a casual atmosphere. There was an open kitchen counter for the garde manger station, and we could also peer into the main kitchen through a window right by our table. The service staff seemed a bit lost at times but our server was friendly and very accommodating to non-German speakers.

The first course was poached trout with marinated cucumbers. One of the down sides of Austria is that it is landlocked, so there are no saltwater fish available locally. But this freshwater trout made up for the lack of seafood! It was cooked perfectly and just melted in my mouth. When I ate this dish I immediately thought that Japanese people would love this restaurant.

The second course was a surprising one. A warm beet salad with endive and a goats milk cheese sauce. I’m not a fan of beets (ever since I had to cook beets every day while working at a restaurant) but this dish was so flavorful and almost meaty.

The main course was good but my least favorite: Sous vide pork back with celery root, gnocci and lovage foam. The overall dish tasted good but for something that was sous vide, it wasn’t that tender. I guess pork back has so little fat that even cooking it low and slow can’t make it tender. It also doesn’t taste as strong because there is hardly any fat. The gnocci was amazing though.

They had two choices for desserts and I decided to go with the chocolate creme with berries. It was good but nothing memorable.

I was very impressed with the food at Restaurant Konstantin Filippou and I would highly recommend this place to anyone who visits Vienna. It is in no way expressive of Austrian cuisine, and I wouldn’t call it even modern Austrian cuisine, but it is well executed food with simple yet complex flavors. The FOH could use a little more work but I guess technicalities don’t really matter as much if you enjoy the meal 🙂 The tableware used at this restaurant was quite interesting and I thought the coffee cup looked very Japanese. I asked our server about it and it actually was from Japan!