Wiener Würstelstand

Review

It's all about the sausage

Photo: Katharina Gossow Sausage is great. Sausage is an achievement of civilization, because the aim was to make otherwise difficult to use leftovers from a slaughtered animal not only tasty, but also durable. By salting, drying, smoking, cooking, fermenting or all of the above. The variety of sausages is endless, and Vienna's sausage culture is a mixture of Polish, Hungarian, Bavarian, German and Slovenian influences. Until the last generation, sausage was an integral part of local snack and food culture. That has changed. Nitrite curing salt, fat, meat, all not such big hits with young urban people, cold cut platters gave way to bowls, and ending a drunken evening at the sausage stand with a Haaß'n is no longer a matter of course. This has had an effect: The number of Viennese sausage stands has shrunk dramatically in recent years, which is of course also due to the attractiveness of Asian and Oriental competition, unimaginativeness, the serving of industrial mass-produced goods and high prices. Sausage culture enthusiasts tried again and again to slow down the decline by reinventing themselves, but it didn't work. Stefan Sengl, political consultant, and Mike Lanner, start-upper and former brother of Stitch, tried it anyway, "because I simply didn't have a sausage stand I trusted anymore," says Lanner. Which was not a pleasant situation for him as an Upper Austrian (Sengl was born in Salzburg). They took over the legendary stand at Pfeilheim - not necessarily a high-frequency location, which is actually a basic requirement for a sausage stand today - and spent a long time looking for good products. Bread and specially made Bosna rolls from Gragger ("he's from Upper Austria, I don't have to explain a Bosna to him"), beer from the iconic Augustiner-Bräu in Salzburg's Mülln, among others, which is still brewed as it was 100 years ago, stored in barrels and, above all, not shipped out of Salzburg, and of course great sausages. From Hofmann from Hollabrunn, Schober from Gars am Kamp or Langl from Ottakring, with whom Lanner is currently developing a curing salt-free sausage range. And Gipsy Swing plays to go with it. But that's all bobo and misses the proletarian origins of the sausage stand! So what? The Bosna sell like hot Bosna, especially the vegan version with mushroom sausages from the great mushroom growers Hut & Stiel from Donaustadt (€ 4.90) and it's hard to find a better sausage than the tender lamb sausages from Schober at a Viennese stall (€ 4.90). In any case, people come back. Because Viennese street food culture is important to them, because the beer is so good and the sausages taste so good. To sum up: the high-risk project of setting up a sausage stand with selected goods apparently works after all. Hurray! Wiener Wü 8th, Pfeilg. 1, Tue, Wed 11.30-24, Thu-Sat 11.30-04,

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