Naschmarkt — Local services in Vienna

One Monday morning back in September we went out of our way to go over to the Naschmarkt to explore what they had to offer. It's quite a long, thin market area with many permanent stores offering food, football shirts, souvenirs with a plethora of cafes and restaurants. We weren't looking for anything in particular but we took a fancy to the stalls selling olives and dried fruits. At one stall we decided to try some of the olives being offered to sample and came across a very insistent young man who tried to talk the hind leg off a donkey to us. We agreed to buy two types of olives but were shocked when we grabbed two large handfuls and asked us to pay well over 30€. No way. He seemed to get a little belligerent. Me too. My wife eventually intervened and we compromised by buying two tiny bags full which still cost 12€. Wow!

At one end of this market there are more places selling fish and seafood. I was particularly impressed with the kiosk/shop selling caviar - a kilos worth costing nearly €4.00,00. Who has that in small cash for a casual visit to a market?

We did stop and have a drink at one of the many cafes here but left thinking that the prices in Vienna are way higher than we'd expect back...

After 3 days of dining in restaurants, we decided to go to Naschmarkt for some streetfood. The Wiense Wurst stall was great, the Ukrainians with their Gnocci stall were friendly and offered us great food and the beer stall was cheap for half liters. However, the nut and cheese vendors are horrible. They try to scam you at every opportunity, we accepted a free cheese sample and then just walked away, because we didn't want cheese. But then came the nuts, we decided to sample them and after having made our choice between 2 types of nuts, they kept offering us other nuts to sample. Eventually we managed to get him to stop and asked him for 100g of each nut. He gave us 500g of each nut and tried to guilt trip us into buying them. We persisted and ended up with two bags of nuts with the desired amount.

Our best tip would be to either avoid these scam artists altogether or stay firm in your desires and your terms, not theirs. Let's hope if everyone does this, it will have some effect in...

I second the previous reviewer, but I don't think one should skip it while in Vienna... It's an open market with food stalls but full of asian vendors who accost you in very rude ways; they made us feel uncomfortable and we just wanted to get out of there.

On the other hand, you feel that they are genuine stores, for locals to provision from (butchers, bakers, groceries etcc) and plenty of other tourist traps..

Some stores are decent, especially the cheese and ham stores; like Urbanek and some other cheese stores but then you have the Turkish and Middle Easter food stalls that ruin the atmosphere..

It is worth visiting I believe.. We stopped at Urbanek and had a cold cut and cheese platter with wine.. The food was not great and it was pricey for the amount of food served and its quality but it was a nice...