Figlmüller and the Wiener Schnitzel

Why is it significant?

Turn into the little passage off the Wollzeile and listen: somewhere in there, a kitchen hammer is beating meat flat, again and again. This is Figlmüller, a wine tavern opened in 1905 by Johann Figlmüller, and its schnitzel is famous for hanging over the edges of the plate.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Turn into the little passage off the Wollzeile and listen: somewhere in there, a kitchen hammer is beating meat flat, again and again. This is Figlmüller, a wine tavern opened in 1905 by Johann Figlmüller, and its schnitzel is famous for hanging over the edges of the plate.

Here is the first secret. By Austrian food rules, a true Wiener Schnitzel must be made of veal. If it is pork, it has to be called schnitzel in the Viennese style. Figlmüller's signature version is pork, pounded thin and wide, and the house has never been shy about that. The Viennese argue about this the way other nations argue about politics.

And the second secret is about the legend. You may hear that Field Marshal Radetzky brought the recipe back from Milan in the nineteenth century, copied from the Italian cotoletta. It is a wonderful story, and historians have found no reliable evidence for it. Breaded and fried meat was cooked in many European kitchens, and the name Wiener Schnitzel only turns up in cookbooks late in the nineteenth century.

What matters is the technique. The cutlet is dipped in flour, egg and breadcrumbs, then fried in plenty of hot fat while the pan is swirled, so that the crust puffs up into waves and floats away from the meat. Cooks call it souffliert. The meat is beaten until it is only a few millimetres thick, so it is cooked through in the time the crust takes to turn golden. A good schnitzel should be dry enough to sit on a napkin without leaving a stain. Next to it, a potato salad dressed with vinegar and broth, never mayonnaise, or a lettuce salad, and a wedge of lemon.

A schnitzel and a glass of white wine at lunchtime is about as Viennese as it gets. Now walk back towards the cathedral and take the Kärntner Straße south, then turn left into the Himmelpfortgasse, the lane of the gate of heaven.