Café Kandl

Review

All is well

Photo: Heribert Corn Robin Peller grew up in a Viennese hippy family, burnt out at 16, was a surfer in Portugal, a restorer in Cambridge and a photographer all over the world. Ten years ago, a friend took him to the Loos Bar for the first time and he fell in love with it straight away, which is why he started working there as a dishwasher and invested every penny he could spare in cocktail studies. Peller went on to work behind the bar at Loos and with Roberto, but then switched to the museum business until an international project became too big for him and he jumped ship. In short: Robin Peller is an interesting young man who has already experienced all sorts of things. And one day he was walking through Kandlgasse, saw that the old Café Kandl had just closed, went into the inner courtyard of the old Biedermeier house and had an epiphany: you have to open a place here, a kind of modern coffee house where people come to meet, chat, eat, but also to drink, "a place with great coffee, great drinks and great food".
Well, Robin Peller probably wasn't the first to have this idea, but what he and his partner Jamil El Azem have done with the old pub is definitely more than just remarkable. The fact that they used a design familiar from organic hotels in the Waldviertel is a little surprising. He didn't want anything modern, but an interior that would still be in place in 30 years' time and, above all, would last. The courtyard garden that so impressed him back then is indeed a feast for the eyes, a renovated barrack, a wooden terrace, surrounded by trees - the word "idyll" springs to mind, it's a shame it's not spring right now. The espresso is from Süssmund and great, and of course the bar can do it too, with 22 gins from all over the world, eleven gin and tonics, 13 cool vermouths and its own menu of creative cocktails, one of which even bears the name of Austria's first female chancellor (yes, a beer cocktail). And now for the really great stuff: The chef is Julian Lechner, who previously worked at Aend and Mraz & Sohn, two restaurants that currently offer the best and most modern food in the country. Lechner's breakfast menu is somewhat definitive, in the evening there are fine snacks, but what is really sensational is what the man brings out as a lunch menu: for example, a celery and cardamom cream soup of the finest quality, if you didn't know what cardamom tastes like before, then you will. And a corn chicken breast, so tender and juicy and crispy and delicious, with pine nut rice and rosemary jus, all for 11.80 euros. Oida! If Café Kandl manages to remain as good as it is at the moment, at least in a few respects, then that's great. Summary: At first glance, this is an inconspicuous restaurant, but it's top class at almost every level. Café Kandl 7th, Kandlgasse 12, Tel. 0664/348 58 09, Tue-Sun 8am-2pm,

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