toma tu tiempo

Review

Dr. jur. tapa

At some point, Lucia Zelikovics and Paul Pichler, both lawyers, went surfing. They went to southern Spain because the wind was so good there. And they realized that it wasn't just the wind that was great there, but a whole lot more, specifically food and drink, and not just simplicity and deliciousness, but above all the simplicity of presentation and enjoyment. That's what they enjoyed, that's what they wanted. So they looked for a restaurant, found the dark booth of a credit broker next to Gaumenspiel and St. Ellas, opposite the city of Krems, around the corner from ChinaBar, Grünauer and what felt like a hundred other fine restaurants. They tore out false ceilings, carpets and other outgrowths of furnishing hell, provided new windows, laid a virtually untreated spruce floor and Portuguese tiles (the Spanish ones would have taken so long to deliver), made display cabinets from old lanterns and set up tables from an Innviertel farm. And in doing so, created a restaurant that looks nothing like any other Spanish restaurant - no dark wood, no Osborne bull, no dangling Serrano clubs. Instead, toma tu tiempo looks like the terraces and balconies of our best friends here in Vienna (if they had terraces and balconies), spiced up with pots of herbs, flowers, the odd lemon tree and pleasant background music that has nothing of the flamenco about it. And it was packed from its first day about a month ago. The menu isn't particularly unusual, the ingredients used no more authentic or special than in other tapas bars in the city, but in combination with this completely informal atmosphere, it's obviously just right. The fact that the manzanilla is chilled with ice cubes (and has been open too long) is compensated for with a small bowl of home-pickled lemon olives to go with the Estrella beer; the fact that there is a little too much cream in the saffron soup doesn't matter too much, as they didn't skimp on the saffron either (€ 3.50); and the fact that the goat's cheese for the tortilla of the day comes from France is also easy to bear when you know that Lucia Zelikovics and Paul Pichler lightly fry the raw potatoes for it and thus go the elaborate, true way of making potato omelettes (€ 3.50). Dates with serrano and almonds okay (€ 3.50), the boquerones (sour marinated anchovy fillets) can be saved (€ 3.50), the albondigas - meatballs in paradeis sauce - are available in every tapas restaurant, but they really aren't as fluffy and well-seasoned everywhere (€ 3.50).
A nice place, a good place to take your time, as the name of the place suggests. Summary: A new tapas place that may not be one of the most authentic, but is still a pretty good place. toma tu tiempo, 7th, Zieglerg. 44, Tel. 0660/819 25 90, Tue-Fri 12-23, Sat 10-24,

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