Drei Bögen

Review

Shopping, please at the back

We like to surround ourselves with good things. In restaurants, the wine bottles are on the visible shelf, not so that we can reach for them quickly (they would be too warm for that anyway), but because they make us feel good. And so it's not a bad idea in itself to have a range of goods in a restaurant - not so much because you want to sell them here, but because they add to the atmosphere.
During the pandemic lockdowns, Karl Wrenkh, second-generation co-owner of the vegetarian Wrenkh restaurants, and his buddy Konstantin Lütgendorf, the former commander of the Allentsteig military training area, retreated to a cottage in the Waldviertel, drank wine and hatched plans on how to sell the wonderful products from small Waldviertel businesses in Vienna. At the same time, Pablo Caldarola and two real estate entrepreneur friends came up with the concept of a wine bar. A former boutique on Landstraßer Hauptstraße was available and they came together. So far, so wonderful, and the Drei Bögen project has turned out really pretty, it has to be said: poured terrazzo flooring, a really great bar made of stainless steel sheets and pastel green terrazzo, immaculately carpentered wine racks and a grocery store area that also reveals carpentry craftsmanship. Great, but Drei Bögen leaves out a bit of the rest: A wine bar as a communicative place in and of itself with only two small tables where you can sit opposite each other is a bit odd. All the other seats face the wall or the bar. The wines come from just three wineries, which are okay anyway, but not exactly a generous selection for a wine bar. And for a wine bar with a grocery store, the food on offer is somewhat uninspired in the form of a gratinated Camembert with onion marmalade, a snack board with a little salami, prosciutto (the venison ham had just run out) and mountain cheese (€ 7) and a kind of potato ragout au gratin with ham (€ 8). Bartender John explains that more creative tapas will be coming soon. But how they will be prepared with the small toaster behind the bar remains to be seen. And finally: There are a few interesting things to be had in the so-called Greißlerei. Danish whisky, for example, Waldviertel flour, pickled vegetables from Burgenland, really good pasta and, as managing director Pablo Caldarola is Argentinian, also mate powder. However, the grocery store is well hidden in a back room. It doesn't seem to have been thought through to the end, a concept that promises the egg-laying wool-milk sow but turns out to be a chicken soup.

More in Bar, Nightclub
Food & Drink in Vienna