Restaurant Konstantin Filippou

Review

We eat in the kitchen, Vol. 2

Konstantin Filippou has a deep voice. And you can hear it when he speaks or gives his orders; after all, the kitchen is only separated from the dining area of his new restaurant by a wall of windows. Parts of the kitchen - the station where the amuse gueules and cold starters are prepared - have even been moved into the restaurant, although that would be the least significant aspect of this new restaurant. Much more unusual is the fact that a young chef has set himself up and created a restaurant that has the ambition to play in the top culinary league. And without a group of investors, a hotel or a rich family in the background, at his own risk, which hardly any chef in Austria dares to do any more. The fact that anyone dares to devote themselves to grande cuisine today, with its enormous personnel costs, its considerable use of goods and the considerable additional costs (the wine cellar alone!), is equally astonishing. He would certainly have a larger audience and wider approval with something "uncomplicated". However, Konstantin Filippou is not the type to create a "casual urban neo-bistro" with some cool designer sandwiches. The young man from Graz has already cooked for too many of the world's culinary gods (including Juan Mari Arzak and Gordon Ramsay), his ambition and skills are simply too great for that. It all sounds a bit pathetic, I know, but I was really impressed by the man's food. There are two menus that offer a stylistic unity, you choose from four (€56) or six (€75) courses, sit at solid natural wood tables that Filippou had made in the Bucklige Welt, on elegant armchairs that are somewhat reminiscent of Nordic luxury yachts from the 1930s, and a massive knife from Paris is placed on a small stone pedestal.
The oysters with cucumber and the smoked trout with rice cream, the pork belly with raw egg yolk and eel, this incredible poached mackerel, as tender as it is beautiful to look at, the bonito with peanut and brioche croutons in a crustacean stock and the double course with snail, beef marrow and beetroot. And: Filippou also cooks a menu of "normal" food for lunch, which is also quite impressive, for example the best vichyssoise in town, fried salmon trout with beet, horseradish cream and basil sauce, wonderfully intense bœuf bourguignon with a little scallop kinkerlitz and pot dumplings with salted almond ice cream. It's all very good and comes to a total of 25 euros. Cheap enough to be able to eat the big menu again next week. Summary: a young man from Graz with Greek roots is setting out to enrich Vienna's gourmet restaurant scene a little. Konstantin Filippou 1st, Dominikanerbastei 17, Mon-Fri 12-14, 18.30-24,

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