The best Beef Tartare this side of Paris…in Vienna

The French bistro Beaulieu in the city center is housed in the fancy-schmancy Palais Ferstel. Here, they may be serving up the closest thing to French beef tartare you’ll get in Vienna. Complete with the setting of a typical, small Parisian-like packed restaurant, with patterned tiles, French waiters, and a menu (in French), including French cheese, French bread, and French onion soup, you may end up forgetting that your’e in Vienna. The beef tartare is made from finely minced beef, served with butter, onions and a few slices of French baguette on the side.

A fancy hotel, elegant people and some classy Austrian wine is not a bad accompaniment to go with your beef tartare experience at Kempinski. Their bodacious beef tartare, created by the Michelin chef Norman Etzold right in front of our eyes, comes served on a colourful adn artfully laid out tray made up of around 10 different ingredients (incl. capers, egg yolk, chives, your choice of English or French mustard) and a bowl full of ground beef tartare. Our neighbours couldn’t help but immediately order the same thing after one look of the masterpiece. You can adjust the tartare to serve your liking, meaning the chef will customise and mix in as much spice as you desire.

Often forgotten when dining out on beef tartare – you have to invest a large amount of trust in a chef when they’re serving you up raw pile of meat. After talking tartare with Peter, the head chef at Heuer, we’d trust him with our life…or as our hairdresser (they also require a bunch of trust). The beef tartare being served up at Heuer sticks relatively to the classic traditions of the dish, except t the gleaming 3-minute cooked egg yolk nestles into a creamy avacodo paste on top of the round meat slab. The meat is quality stuff, we’re assured – ‘sourced by young Austrian cows from a family-business of a butcher who still kill their pigs and cattle weekly out in the lovely country-side (a fact we could have lived without, but may be interesting for some of you tartare tyrants. Packed into the beefy goodness are capers, lemon zest, olive oil, pickles, salt, pepper and fermented tomatoes. Nothing surprising there, but the taste certainly is – beef-ba-ba-boom tartare. The salted butter is served at the right temparature for easy spreading and the toast…well, it’s toast.

Heuer also boasts one of the finest outside dining areas in the city where to enjoy your tartare.

Plus: stay for drinks after your tartar, the drinks are pretty damn good.

The classy Skopik & Lohn offers a mean steak tartare just down the road from Karmelitermarkt. Neatly presented, this starter will only make you want to mess it up. What we liked with Skopik & Lohn’s tartare was the use of lightly fried shallots in the dish. It avoids the overpowering taste of raw onions you often find in other variations of this dish.Well-spiced,  enough room is left to taste the full flavour of the high-quality, finely chopped beef.

It comes with a generous serving of Dijon mustard, mayonnaise, that adds a subtle sharpness, meanwhile, there’s also thetypical  side of toast.  The only critical note we have is that we’d have liked the serving temperature of the meat to be a bit lower, especially on a balmy summer evening.
Skopik & Lohn’s steak tartare is an excellent choice and priced accordingly.

Plus: make sure to call ahead for a reservation, the restaurant is popular and always fully booked.

DSTRIKT Steakhouse at the Ritz Carlton Hotel adds a element of spectacle to your beef tartare experience, as the waiter or waitress will be preparing it for you at your table. You will not only be guided through the process, but you can also add you personal touch to the dish, as you will be asked to try and adjust the ingredients. Starting with the marinade, egg yolk, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, Hennessy and a pinch of tabasco will be mixed with the meat – that is finely cut by hand. Also added will be anchovies, onion, parsley, mustard and pickles before the mixture is finally shaped into three neat portions, and served with toast and mustard.
The final presentation lacks a bit of grace, but after watching the whole process of putting the beef tartare together, you’re too hungry to care anyway. And the flavours would compensate if it was served up on a shovel.

Out of this classic for Austrian cuisine comes a Korean-Vietnamese raw beef fusion. Café im Hof is serving up a beef tartare that distinguishes itself from the mainstream in as much as it is simply an inventive different take on the dish. Mixed with a range of delicious oriental herbs and with a petrified egg-yolk on top, the beef tartare at im Hof passes as a wonderful starter or lunchtime snack. It also won’t break the bank. Head chef Daniel waxes lyrically about the soy marinade used, which contains Nashi-Birne (pears) that grow on a few trees 20 metres from the Naschmarkt.