Der Bettelstudent — Restaurant in Vienna

Absolutely unacceptable handling of a life-threatening allergy, avoid this restaurant at all costs if you have any food allergies.

We visited this restaurant as part of an organized group trip and made it absolutely clear in advance that our child has severe allergies to both nuts and fish. Despite this, they served him a dish of tomato with a slice of cheese and pesto for the first course. Pesto traditionally contains pine nuts and sometimes anchovies, exactly the allergens we warned them about.

We flagged it immediately, and they brought another plate supposedly without pesto. But something had clearly gone wrong, within two minutes of eating it, our child began vomiting, had difficulty breathing, and broke out in a rash across his torso. We had to administer adrenaline, high-dose oral corticosteroids, and salbutamol right there.

What made everything worse, and frankly, unforgivable, was the attitude of the staff. When we told the waiter, he denied everything. We asked to speak to the manager, who not only denied it again, but did so in an aggressive and arrogant tone, getting annoyed that we had already spoken to the waiter.

Later, when I explained to the same waiter what had happened and what we had to do to save our son, he first pretended not to know what I was talking about, and then, when pressed, suddenly remembered , only to deny it all again.

This kind of behavior is not only unprofessional, it’s dangerously negligent. Whether they used pre-made pesto without checking ingredients, or carelessly removed it without preventing cross-contamination, they exposed a child to a life-threatening allergen, after having been clearly warned.

If you or anyone you care about has a food allergy, do NOT go to...

We came here for our last dinner in Vienna. We decided to leave our dinner choice to chance and not research beforehand, and I’m not sure that was the best idea.

The food and beer here were overall quite decent. We got a schnitzel and a dish that consisted of meat, sausage, potato, onions, and a fried egg all in one pan. Prices were reasonable for the city center.

We could tell within a few moments of sitting down that the place was a bit understaffed and the waiter a bit inexperienced. Most of the customers on the patio looked frustrated at one point or another with his inattentiveness. Some people even left after not being served. We weren’t in a big hurry and didn’t want to go through the trouble of finding another place, so we decided against our better judgement not to leave. Once we got our menus after about 15 minutes, we ordered and got our food pretty quickly.

Dessert was where things went downhill and stars started coming off the review. By that point things were less busy at the restaurant, and it should have been easier for the staff to cope with. We ordered a simple apple strudel to share, no coffees. The waiter forgot to put it in the system...twice! That meant we saw people who ordered after us eating long before we were served. One couple came after the first forgotten order and managed to get an apple strudel before we did.

When it finally came out, it felt like it had more raisins than apple, which just added to the disappointment. If I had known all that would happen, I probably would have gone somewhere else. I can’t give below the three stars because the food itself was good, but I can’t recommend this place to anyone who is in any kind of hurry. If you’ve got somewhere to be, go...

We had a reservation for lunch for 5 people and they placed us in a shadowing corner on a high table, on 25th, where we came to eat as a family. Then we asked if we can change table as one of the group felt very tight and uncomfortable. We were escorted upstairs, and there were two tables, one nice round table with 5 chairs and a square one next to the waiter's corner with all the cutlery dishes etc. This fantastically hilly billy waiter, told us to sit at the uncomfortable table, there were two children with us. Most of the time, his fly (zipper pants) was open and generally he seemed he was drinking beers during working. I was watching him to receive an order from another table and not only he was loud but to take the order he sat on the table, which seemed unprofessional to me. Eventually, even if we ordered first, their drinks came earlier than ours. Multiple times he was creating noise with the cutlery and dishes, we felt he was doing that on purpose... Not professional at all, however he closed his fly after 45 minutes. The food was good but the person that tried to take care of us was not customer oriented... I would not go there again due to this bad service and because they had the chance to give us a nicer table but they kept it, till we left nobody sat on that table, nor was reserved... Imagine that we did reserve and got the worst table at the start... Happy New Year, fire this man... 25th of December...