6 of Vienna’s best restaurants for steak

Hidden inside a courtyard off of Neubaugasse lies this gastronomical gem! For over 2 years, Door No.8 has proven that quality fine dining does not have to be pretentious, but can be an all-round delicious experience for everyone. The interior screams hipster, yet has an original personality, with funky designs on the  walls and wooden art figures all over the place. One thing we really liked was the wine maps that guide you through the tough decision of choosing a wine to drink with your steak.

Now lets get to the steaks: they are tender and cooked, to our preferences, to perfection. The quality of the steaks and the time and care each steak is given by the talented steak-chefs shows on the plate. Every steak is prepared with the process of sous vide, before it’s finished off on a fire grill. This unique process is what makes the steaks so tender and buttery to cut through. Oh, and you can do your cutting with a knife of your choice from the range they offer up.

Tip: Do your taste buds a favour and order the Steak Trilogie with fries!

DSTRIKT Steakhouse is not the place where you should look at the prices on the menu, and if manage to resist, you will definitely enjoy a food feast that will last over several hours, and you may just tell your grandkids about some day.
This place’s vast selection of steaks has something for everyone. Apart from the classic beef filet, T-bone, Beiried (sirloin), Prime Rib or Tomahawk, DSTRIKT also serves Charolais from France, Porterhouse Angus from Omaha, Bistecca from Italy, and Wagyu Beef from Japan. So pretty much the whole lexicon of steak.

After choosing our own steak knife from a box – that makes us feel like real connoisseurs – we try the T-bone and the Flank steak, both with a Sauce Béarnaise, a green pepper sauce, a red wine shallot sauce and a special herbed butter, as well as a selection of side dishes. While masterly cutting up the meat, right in front of us at our table, we have a great chat with our waiter, Christoph, who dishes us all the facts about the meat and the ingredients, and all the other tiny details about the food on the table. We can taste the meat’s quality and super tender texture, even after half an hour (this is how long it took us to get all the way through the huge chunk of meat) – especially the flank steak surprises us with its silky response to the knife.
The grilled vegetables, mushrooms, french fries and coleslaw are a perfect accompaniment, but we have to give up half way through due to a lack of space in our stomachs, which made us a little sad – especially as we didn’t get to finish off the onion rings that have been bathed in butter milk and double deep-fried (mmmm, we want a butter milk bath).
Meanwhile, all of this happened in the formal, yet casual, modern setting of the place – the kind of places we love where you feel comfortable, but can indulge in a fine dining experiences.

Let’s get one thing straight – El Gaucho’s Argentine roots begin and end with this concept chain restaurant’s name, and where it sources its steak. So don’t come here with cravings for an Argentine open grill Parrilla experience like we did. But if it’s mouth-watering steak you’re craving, here you’ll be sure to quench it.

El Gaucho could be compared to an Austrian who has mastered the tango. But this dance is done on the grill. In the kitchen, the boisterous bunch of cooks practice in the art of Argentine-style grilling – marinade only with salt, turn meat only once – with all of them trained by the restaurants head Grillmeister, Christoph Widakovich.

“I’ll go get the Fleischbox,” says Peter, the baby-faced manager, after I ask which steak he’d recommend.

While the name, Fleischbox, conjures up images of a wrestling cage in which two burly, moustached men go at it, Peter turns up with a plastic see-through box filled with different cuts of steak. He describes each of them in detail. I ask him his favourite and I agree to it as I just want to see the meat cooked and on my plate – the sight of raw meat gives us the creeps.
Peter comes from a family mad on meat who’ve opened El Gaucho restaurants all over Austria, and one in Germany.

Under Gaucho Beef in the menu (All of their steak out of Argentina) you’ll find all the popular cuts in the Argentine barbecue, including the sacred, piece de résistance, churrasco cut (a tender boneless piece of meat, sliced thinly).

Accompanying this list is a selection of the Rump, the Porterhouse, the T-Bone and Rib-eye of a Dry Aged Austrian cow. If you like your slab of juicy, grilled animal with something on top, you can ‘pimp your steak’ with toppings, such as garlic prawns or soft shell crab.

Gergely’s could be considered an insider’s tip amongst those mad for meat in town. Hidden away down a cobblestone side street in the 5th district, some of the juiciest cuts are being sizzled up. To get to the meat of the issue (we’re sorry, that’s the last pun, we promise) there’s plenty of important decisions to be made when choosing your steak here.; first you choose what kind, and what nationality cow you’ll be wanting your cut from – Argentinian Angus, American or Australian Hereford or an Upper Austrian Weidemastrind – than what kind of cut you’d like, and finally, what sides and sauces you’d like to pair it with – classic, French, Mexican or a salad-filled Light option. Once you’ve worked all this out, you can move onto the wine list which is full of bold reds and is 28 pages long (we recommend the Argentinian Malbec). There are two things that we really loved about this place – besides the knife-cuts-into-it-like-butter steaks – the charming and shady garden hidden in the cobblestone courtyard out the back, and the affordable prices. Actually, this has to be one of the most fairly priced steakhouses we’ve been to in this city. They also offer good deals to share with your fellow diners, like the steak for two (incl. Angus steak, a bottle of wine and a side of roasted potatoes for 69€), or if you’re a group of people, they’ll bring a big slab of meat to your table that you can all feast on like a pack of barbarians, and pay a price per head. There’s a holiday feel about Gergely’s alongwith super-friendly waiters and a (medium) rare familiarity to the whole atmosphere.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Stellas is a bit fancy and pretentious. Its appearance and clientele screams it, but once the Schanigarten is open, Stellas true colours are revealed. The wooden-decked alfresco garden, surrounded by greenery to shelter you from the passing cars, shows the very laid back soul of St. Ellas. The place is a bar, bistro and steakhouse, wrapped up in one.

The steaks, also reflect Stellas laid-back approach – the cuts are lightly seasoned – to let the meat do the talking – and comes in a variety of cuts (eg. Rib Eye and Flank steak), hail mostly from the US, and are all very affordable. Each steak comes with a choice of two dips (chilli aioli, BBQ, coriander lime mayo, herb pine pesto or herb butter) and can be upgraded to a mighty surf and turf should you fancy some king prawns with your cow. And the sides include all the desired accompaniments with a steak eg. baked vegetables, fries, or potato gratin.

We recommend… having a whiskey! They have 21 to choose from, although the guy on the table next to us was recommending the Lillet Vivet with strawberries and mint to anyone who would listen.

Good to know… they also have a cocktail list worth paying attention to

Flatschers is one of those really busy places where you might want to make a reservation a couple of days before. But even if you don’t, you will be well tended to at the bar until one of the really courteous waiters set you up with a table. One can sip on a Hugo Spritzer or an Augustiner Helles on tap here while flipping through the menu in its newspaper format and choosing between the numerous types of steak out of South America, the US , or the 89€ meaty T-Bone babe out of Australia. The sizes are gender-ised (like when sexism was still a thing) with the ladies cut at 180g and the Gentleman’s cut at 260g. There’s also a few things about Flatschers steak menu that you won’t get anywhere else in the city: the Surf and Turf with a couple of big prawns and oysters, done on a lava stone grill, and the ultimate group eating activity – the Flatscher’s BOB (Best of beef) option which will have you sharing a T-Bone or a Center cut for almost 200€. And while these steaks will satisfy you, we recommend you don’t skimp on the sides, like the homemade cut fries or the grilled corn.

The steak we devoured (to the tunes of New York classics in the background) was grilled to medium-rare perfection with a side of home-made steak cut fries, and a big smile from the smartly dressed waiting staff. The steaks are prepared in the traditional New York tradition, and live up to the high expectations that the atmosphere inspires. While it disguises itself as a diner, it’s got too much class to be one.

Good to know… Flatschers also offers a ‘Steak away’ service which allows you to buy the high quality steaks they source from around the world, and take it home to grill up yourself.