Santoor (modernes persisches Restaurant in Wien) — Restaurant in Vienna

Brought my girlfriend here for her first true Iranian food experience. Great quality and hot food Good service (Need to be more consistent with more customers as i see in the newer reviews) Large portions beautifully presented, I loved the pomegranate seeds on Fesenjoon Most Iranian restaurant just add more oil for faster preparation but this was the first restaurant that brought us high quality food with no oil gathering on top and the food not leaving you feel bad and extra heavy after finishing, this goes both for Kababs and Khoresht. Kabab barg was done masterfully soft and would easily come apart Carefully chosen rice Even the chicken breast in Khoresht Fesenjoon was tender and soft Salad was also very fresh and delicious Doogh was perfect with being a bit carbonated which i missed a lot.

There was a beautiful bar as well but unfortunately we didn't have time to try it out.

Important things to improve: The restaurant is beautiful, but not designed in Iranian fashion, A unique mixture of Austrian/Iranian decoration might make it more memorable You could play Santoor music in track with the name of the restaurant but remember to never have the music too loud. The presence of a physical menu is a great opportunity for you to showcase the beauty of Iranian food, do not sleep on it. Hire a good designer/photographer to implant pictures of the food (you already have good descriptions) in a carefully Iranian themed menu booklet.

Keep your prices fair and quality high and I will most definitely visit again with more people.

EDIT: I forgot to mention their amazing Ash as well :) Photo added. Perfect density and a lot of...

Solid 9 rating. Given my background, starting with 1) being Iranian, 2) having worked as a cook in a persian nightclub/restaurant, making two-three hundred kabob dishes every night; 3) Having traveled to many countries and visited every persian restaurant in whatever cities; i must say that the food experience at Santour was a solid 9 out of 10.

I don't care about ambiance, decorations, locations etc.. I mainly care about food taste, quality second and third portion size. Service is fourth.

The koubideh, joojeh and lamb chops were perfectly seasoned and cooked. Be sure to ask for medium or juicy. Cooks tend to overcook the kabobs in general, since it is a matter of less than a minute to overcook, since the meat is thin and is also being cooked from the inside, as the metal skewer gets super hot from the flames.

Anyhow, why not a 10? Because the portions were smaller than usual. It is not about value for money. It is about portion size. The kabobs could have been larger and I was willing to pay for it.

Two things to always emphasize when ordering at any persian restaurant:

1. order juicy or medium. (ABDAR in Farsi).

2. ask for 🔥 hot rice. Typically rice is steam cooked hours before, hence it is warm when it is served onto your plate, so by the time it gets to your table, it is barely warm.

Anyhow, Santour was great....

Food was okay, really nothing special. We were waiting over an hour for our starters to come out. Only after asking 2 times did we actually get a response. The starters didn’t even require cooking and should have been ready to go. The flatbread was not even warm and felt like it just came out of a bag from the shop. After our starters, the table was never properly cleared. We waited an another hour for our main course to arrive. Again, no information and we had to ask multiple times where our food was. We never received an apology until we asked why the food hadn’t arrived. Other tables, that arrived much later than us, had already received their food while we were waiting.

The mains arrived, were warm but not really that hot. The stews had very little meat in and in summary, it was just okay. It definitely wasn’t worthy of the prices.

We did receive a complementary tea and cake. However, the service throughout was friendly but very poor. We asked multiple times for certain things before receiving them (cutlery etc) and jobs were half finished (clearing the table). In summary, a very frustrating evening.

The music was too loud and the bass was thumping. It was turned down when asked.

Overall, I wouldn’t return and don’t understand how it has such...