&flora — Restaurant in Vienna

Food was ok (and very nicely plated), but I would expect more from a 3-toque restaurant. The starter---Jerusalem artichoke soup with pickled radishes---was quite tasty, as was the dessert, a no-bake deconstructed cheese "cake" with plums. My main, catfish in a saffron stock, root vegetable julienne and daikon, was disappointingly rather bland. I think the slight scoring of the daikon slices was intended to help infuse them with the stock, but then, why only score the side that is above the stock and remains dry? The root vegetables helped add some more flavour, but there was so little of them in proportion to the fish (actually a good quantity) that they ran out. And in any case, it would make sense to include something in the dish to help absorb the large quantity of stock, as at the end, I was left with a puddle in my bowl.

Service was abysmal: After booking for 11:30 in the online system, I spoke with the restaurant to confirm the availability of vegetarian options (the online menu had several typos). The restaurant employee was surprised that I was allowed to book that early, but didn't say anything more about that. When we arrived, we were told they only have coffee and croissants at that time and do not serve lunch until noon. No attempt to offer a solution was made (e.g., one option would have been "please sit down, have a coffee on us, and we'll serve you at noon").  In any case, it was up to us to press the employee for what the options were on their end, and at first, the employee wasn't even sure she could seat us at all. In the end, she committed to seating us at noon. (I don't know why that was actually hard - it seemed like they had ample space.) During the meal, the other servers did an OK job, but not stellar.

I will mention three additional points: The employee who greeted us said this kind of scheduling issue happens all the time - but if so, that just goes to show the restaurant doesn't care enough about the inconvenience to diners to actually fix the issue. I actually had a similar scheduling issue last time I tried to reserve here. On the morning of the reservation (that I made the night before) I was informed by email that they have a large event and are closed to the public. Since I now had to make another booking elsewhere on short notice, I emailed to ask: Presumably this event was planned in advance, so why was I allowed to make that reservation at all? I would have expected at least the courtesy of an apology, and maybe an invitation to return and, say, enjoy a drink on them as compensation. I didn't even get a response. The Restaurant Week menu posted online wasn't actually offered: No "greeting from the kitchen", no coffee, but at least it...

edit: passive aggressive answer from the owner lol because they can not accept the fact that 4 Viennese (& many others, see comments) find their tiny portions overpriced, so they told us to go to a cheaper place :D :D it is very unprofessional to not accept the truth!!

Man oh man, where should I start? The atmosphere is nice, the lights, decorations, interior, furniture, colour coordination, basically the whole concept is like a one-on-one copy from an interior magazine page 3. Good job with that. The service was a tiny bit annoying, especially as we were the only 2 guests when we arrived. Later 2 more people joined us & then some other guests were seated. Seeing that the restaurant was completely empty it was weird asking us for a reservation, also when we realised that there was a second also empty floor 😄 I guess asking customers several times what they want to order, while we were still deciding & waiting for our friends to arrive, can be penetrant.

The coffee was more expensive than in other very well-known & historic coffeehouses, but it was okay.

The bummer was definitely the expensive prices & tiny portions, dessert as well as main dishes! How in the world can they justify these 💥💥 prices? Good location for coffee, but not for food. We had 2 main dishes, 2 desserts, 4 juices & 1 coffee for 100+€! How in the fudging world is that even...

I was excited to try the 3-Gänge dinner for Restaurantwoche since last year but was so disappointed. We arrived 10min early and were offered to start by ordering a couple of drinks at the bar while we wait for our table. 20min later our table was ready while we were still waiting for our Spritz and (very perfumey) G&T. I ordered a glass of wine as soon as the first drinks arrived which took another 20min. The Karotte Tatar was not nice, the frittierte Lauch felt like eating dried grass. The X.O. Hüfte beef was tasty yet somehow the chewiest steak I've had in a long time. If it were tender at all it would have been lovely. The Kohlrabirollen was quite tasteless but the Topinamburpüree was nice. The espresso was fine at least. I found it strange that it was offered before dessert which soon made sense when we were asked at 10:05 if we wanted anything else and we explained that we were still waiting for dessert, and we were asked if we still wanted it, in our 3-Gänge set menu.. I guess we got some rushed/forgotten desserts because we received two different Schokoladenmousse, neither of which were cold nor fluffy, but the flavour was still good and the sorbet was delicious. Overall a laughably bad experience for a 60€pp set menu which is a shame because it's a pretty environment and the server was nice. But not one part of the reservation went...