December 22, 2015 – From Coffee With Love

The first thing that hits you when you walk into this Vienna Coffee Shop, which sits opposite an iconic Viennese building – the Votivkirche (People’s Church) housed inside the Sigmund Freund Park in the 9th District, is that you could easily be inside a London or New York Third Wave Coffee Shop. From that, I mean the design – its classic Anglophone – with a fridge on the right hand-side stocking trendy looking soft drinks, a basket with goodies and a display of tools for coffee lovers.

As you move further towards the ordering counter, there’s a display – not of Austrian style cakes – but rather of Anglophone style goodies displayed in delectable glass dome cake stands – double layer chocolate cakes, carrot cake, banana bread, brownies, granola pots and sandwiches wrapped in organic looking brown paper – there’s even a counter behind, where sandwiches can be freshly made to order, together with the preparation of couscous bowls for a healthy lunch.

If you want to “escape” to NYC, they even have Pastrami Nights every Thursdays. Furthermore, if that wasn’t enough, they open until 10pm every night, except Sundays, which possibly makes them the only new age style coffee shop in Vienna that stay open to 10pm and possibly in Europe. So, after a long day at work, shopping, visiting museums or if you want to meet up with friends to have a great cup f coffee, Jonas Reindl is open to satisfy your cravings.

If you visit the website you will get a full description of the amount of work that has gone into selecting their furniture – recycled Indonesian teak wood, 100 year old chairs – very vintage, but in summary, the décor is very cosy with homely brown leather chairs and sofas, natural wooden tables, high chairs with black metallic frames – in the summer, you can sit outside, get a tan or just people watch. In the winter, it’s cosier, with calming lighting and Frank Sinatra-esqe music. So, you can imagine – people come here to hang out, relax and enjoy the atmosphere with a good cup of coffee and cakes.

Now to the coffee – on machines, they’ve got a Dalla Corte 2 group machine, top class espresso grinders, a brew station for filter coffee (V60, aeropress, chemex and more). To compliment the tools, there’s a coffee menu, displayed on a blackboard style wall highlighting the espresso and filter blend coffees on offer, accompanied by mouth-watering taste profiles – coffees tend to be a house blend, from Süssmund Kaffee (a local Austrian roaster) and guest espresso and filter blend from top coffee roasters on Europe’s mainland.

BUT gadgets and coffee never maketh a café to be featured on this site, so you’ll be glad to know that well-trained and friendly baristi, who speak English are on hand too. The barisiti are always open to discuss what’s on offer and how it might go with your chosen coffee – on one occasion, I wanted a Cortado, using a 150ml glass and that wasn’t a problem – happy customer – see top of post for pic.

I love coming here, because I can get a nice slice of something sweet, accompanied with at least 2 good cups of coffee – usually a milk based one and to finish off with an espresso or filter brew – sometimes a very short Americano, made to order (gee! I’m fussy). On my first trip, being a little bit doubtful, I went straight for a filter blend to check out the skill of the barista (a half Austrian and half Australian guy), where my coffee was prepared using the kalita wave brew filter – see above for brew action and below for the end product – delicious !

All in all, a great place to hang out on a Saturday afternoon with friends and family – my daughter keeps asking me when we can go back to have that chocolate cake.

I’ve also noticed that their clientele is not just increasing but is becoming more and more diverse with respect to ethnicity, age and culture.