Heunisch & Erben

Review

Onion and physalis

Photo: Heribert Corn You have to respect ambition. And when an entrepreneur makes the effort to spend a year converting a huge store on Landstraßer Hauptstraße, filling shelves and display cases with some of the really fine things from Italy and then taking on the minefield of gastronomy - all respect. But ambition alone is often not enough. After all, there is now so much in the Italian gastronomy sector that you need a few very good ideas, a few very courageous chefs and also a damn good interior designer to carve out a niche for yourself. Well, Sapori e delizie, which opened two months ago, at least dispensed with the latter and based its design a little on Italian campsite beach cafés. It certainly has a sentimental charm, this tiled floor, this air conditioning, this energy-saving lighting and these canteen desks - if there was a sea and screaming children outside, it would probably make your heart beat faster. But when it's Landstraßer Hauptstraße out there, it looks like a mixture of a cake shop and a drugstore. Even the large mortadellas and falorni salamis in the display case don't help much. The kitchen offers a manageable weekly menu of starters, pasta and the odd main course, although they hardly stray from the beaten track and even go so far as to serve prosciutto with melon. I mean, it's not just a well-trodden path, it's a path with railings, a sunroof and a chairlift. Onion soup with tomato ciabatta still sounded relatively extravagant, the soup was hot, greasy, had a nice color and plenty of rosemary and dried thyme in it, so it was okay (€ 3.60). And because a few of the spreads on the shelf looked quite promising, so did the crostini: mozzarella sausage/tomato/spring onion was unfortunately fridge-cold, the onion dominated, the liver spread was good, the salsiccia spread was okay so far, but you have to come up with raspberry and physalis as decoration (€ 4.50). This is not an isolated case, as the Facebook page shows, physalis are obligatory here. Then a stuffed melanzani, why not, you think to yourself. Because it's stuffed with onions, mushrooms and peppers, topped with pizza cheese and heaped with spring onions and grilled salami slices, that's why. Looked like the one at the highway rest stop, but not the Italian one (€ 7.50). The espresso was okay, soon they'll be serving Theresianer beer from Trieste. They should sit down with one of these and tweak the concept a bit more. Summary: A new Italian store and restaurant with great ingredients, but unfortunately lacks something in terms of style and cuisine. Sapori e delizie 3rd, Landstraßer Hauptstr. 17 Mon-Fri 8.30-19, Sat 9.30-18

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