Tisch Restaurant

Review

The yellow of the vegan egg

When she took her cookery exam, she also had to prepare meat, Rheta explains, "just touching it was weird for me, of course I didn't taste it". The Hungarian-born chef has been a vegetarian since the age of eight and vegan for twelve years. Rheta cooked in various vegetarian and vegan restaurants, but eating in restaurants herself was always unsatisfactory for her. "With vegan dishes, I always had the feeling that the kitchen was simply leaving something out." So the only solution was to open her own restaurant and cook the way she does for herself. She chose the former Crêperie in Schlösselgasse as the location, a veteran of the Josefstadt restaurant scene, characterized by the special look of so many restaurants in the eighth district: still a bit student, still a bit retro. The renovations were kept to a minimum and the Crêperie was given a subtle makeover. What is really interesting is the kitchen equipment that Rheta and her international team have had installed. The boss herself defines the style of her restaurant, called "Tisch", as "seasonal and not boring", others would perhaps describe it as vegan home cooking. With a little bit of the aforementioned student restaurant feel.
With this in mind, the woman serves the "beef tartare" (beetroot tartare with lentils) in generous portions, with plenty of toasted focaccia and a mountain of salad, which conceals the most remarkable element of this dish (and ultimately the identity-forming product of the "table"), namely the "vegan yolk", which Rheta makes from yellow tomato concentrate and the gelling agent alginate; it doesn't taste like yolk, but feels similar in the mouth (€ 8.90). The cauliflower florets in batter are mainly filling, and more could be made of this "it" vegetable (€ 6.50). And I ordered the baked camembert primarily out of curiosity, not because I thought this reminiscence of Vienna's early vegetarian history was worthwhile.
The "Camembert", which comes from Germany, is made from fermented mashed cauliflower and actually melts like real cheese, but cannot be compared with the (much more expensive) top vegan products from Italy and France. Rheta serves all the cheese here (€ 10.90), by the way. There are a few good beers, the service is brisk and cheerful. It will certainly work, not because the "table" is somehow special, but on the contrary, because the place is completely normal. Summary: They still exist, the student restaurants in Josefstadt. With the difference that the baked Camembert is now vegan.

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