This large bustling place is reminiscent of the Carnegie Delicatessen or Lindy's on a matinee day. Feisty waiters lug trays groaning with oversized portions of food. The cooking is copious and quite good, and the ambience is frenetic. The Viennese take their beef very seriously. An Austrian butcher's chart looks like a map of downtown Hong Kong, with 17 main cuts identified and many more minor cuts indicated.
Restaurants celebrate the same love of beef.
Plachutta is a handsome new restaurant owned by young Mario Plachutta, scion of the family that operates the famous traditional Viennese restaurant Zu Den Drei Husaren . It has no less than 11 different cuts represented on the menu and an entire meal can be built around the animal's products, from beef broth to beef offal sausage to a beef stew. Austria has wonderful fruity red wines, but it is traditional to drink dry whites with a beef feast. The wine's spice and lovely acidity add a fine balance to the meal. Directly across from the opera house, in the back of the elegant Bristol Hotel, is Korso , one of Austria's finest restaurants.