5 of the best hotel breakfasts to go to for a morning holiday in Vienna

Starve yourself a day before the morning you sit down for a brunch at Hotel Daniel. It is the kind of breakfast suited for those moments when you wake up so hungry, you could battle through a Mongol army to get to your morning coffee and croissant. The slightly industrial character in the big-windowed, bright space filled with living room furniture works as the perfect setting to lazily eat your way through the fields of breakfast foods, and sip on the unlimited coffee included. The litre of coffee you’ll drink is needed to balance out the food coma that you’ll gradually work yourself into.

Decisions are hard to make when faced with the buffet – do I start with the fresh waffles with homemade jam, or the custom-made omelette, one of the cereals, a Kipferl with a spread of the quality and bountiful cheese and cold meat variety that I’ll nicely lay out on my plate? This puts a whole new perspective on my mother’s words that the hardest choice I’ll face in life is who I marry. She also said, follow your gut. I look to my gut for guidance, but it just replies with a gurgle.
Having paid the steep 20€ to gain access to this all-you-can-eat orgy of breakfast food, I know I’ll have to find a way to fit all of it in. I’ve cleared my schedule for the day.

Check out out full review of the Hotel Daniel breakfast experience, here.

With pinky finger up as we sip at our coffee (rather noisily to make a point – what point we’re not sure), looking out to the Parisian-like garden facing outwards to the beautiful boulevard that wraps around Vienna’s old city center, we’re filled with a disillusioned sense of grandeur and importance, and regret that we forgot our monocle at home. Well, we don’t actually own a monocle, but the classic, surprisingly symmetrical, yet tastefully modern café of the Grand Ferdinand calls for one. We opt for the classic Wiener Frühstuck (Viennese breakfast), which arrives on a tiered plate stand. There’s one holy-looking (we swear we momentarily saw it glowing) soft-boiled egg on top.
The quality of the breakfast foods can be appreciated, all sourced from regional farmers. Even the cutlery and plates you eat it from has something elegant about them. Meanwhile, the Eggs Benedict is a homage to the chickens that made it possible.

We love… that Grand Ferdinand’s breakfast also serve up many of the unique hard-to-find coffee varieties created in Vienna.

Some hail this as the place for THE best place in Vienna for a breakfast. We don’t know about that, but we will confirm that the breakfast here is something special. The in-house bakery provides a heavenly, homey smell in this place which blends classic Vienna with clean-cut modernity. Here, a vast array of breakfast options can be feasted on. The breakfast packages are not that original, but they’re full of complex flavours – a result of the trained chefs at work on them.
All the egg-centric dishes are there, alongside some amazing French toast creations and homemade Bircher muesli. Meanwhile, you may see people slurping at oysters and champagne for breakfast.

The boldly and creatively upcycled hotel with a social purpose (employing refugees), Magdas Hotel, is not only exciting for its pioneering design feats, yet also for its breakfast buffet. This place was once a nursing home, yet now it’s full of life. The buffet is full of foods from all over the world, just like the staff, and this place has a feel good vibe happening. There’s a glorious outdoor garden that backs onto the Prater park, while the so-called “grünen salon,” possesses a design as interesting as the rest of the hotel.

This place has retro-style coming out of its old, hairy ear holes. Inside this old Viennese hotel that’s been given a new lease on life by a creative bunch, is one of the coolest, well-kept secrets of Vienna, serving up coffee and breakfast from a quality kitchen. We’ve never had such a high opinion of eggs than when we gobbled up one of their many omelettes on the menu (vegan options included) under the low wood-panelled roof, tacky chandeliers, and vintage lamps of the brilliant Brillantengrund café.

The breakfast menu walks its own walk, with a variety of colourfully named omelettes on the menu (Bruce Lee or a Manalita), while the regular Vienna breakfast of rolls, ham and jam is there, and its Oriental equivalent named Mohammad (Pita bread, olives, feta, humus and tsatsiki).
However, if it’s something different you’re looking for, give the Unicorn cycling breakfast a go. Not only because it has the word ‘Unicorn’ in its name, but because it’s one of the most healthy, kick-ass breakfasts we’ve ever digested (bread from Wachau, cheese, oats, maple syrup, vitamin shot, banana, apple, chia seeds).

Read more about the breakfast at Hotel am Brillantengrund, here.