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A waltz of flavors
Cafe Vienna offers cream sauces that comfort, a delicacy in salads, refinement in meat and potatoes and desserts to linger over.
By CHRIS SHERMAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 12, 2000
[Times photo: Pam Royal]
Tournedos “Budapest,” front, and Wienerschnitzel are typical of the menu of classically prepared Middle European fare at Cafe Vienna in St. Petersburg. Beate Klobucar co-owns the restaurant with her husband, Tony.
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ST. PETERSBURG -- Ask about the skyline in the black painting on the wall and Beate Klobucar's mind starts to waltz.
"Vienna ... Stefansdom ... we had a little restaurant there. Ah, the streets, the people."
That was then. Now is St. Petersburg's Snell Isle, with not a kondittorei in sight. The streets and people are ours, and Klobucar and her husband, Tony, have a little place hidden behind Mickey's supermarket.
The tiny space has seen a variety of operators and cuisines, Southern to Italian, but for a year and a half, it has been the Klobucars' little Vienna. This one is worth keeping.
They have just finished making it over. The bar is smaller, and the small dining room not quite so small. Old engravings hang on the walls, classical music is in the air. The restaurant's chief attractions are the warm cooking and courtesy of the Klobucars, which starts with an earnest welcome to strangers, never interrupts a conversation and always remembers you.
If the setting and the cooking are not high Viennese, surely the cooking is the same way the Klobucars cooked there, and proof that Mitteleuropean can rise above beer, brats and kraut (as much as I dearly love them all).
I won't pretend this is diet food or foodie fashionable. There's good reason that cream sauces comfort us, and you can taste it in veal a la Baden. And there is delicacy in salads of wafer thin cucumbers with sour cream, refinement in "meat and potatoes" when potatoes transmute into gnocchi, dumplings or a sensuously silken soup with leeks.
Why even think about lightness in front of a homemade Sacher torte? Yet if you would find it, you'll be surprised how airy and refreshing Viennese style can make a cake of almonds and nuts.
No denying this is old-fashioned Continental, nothing nouvelle to it, and the back-of-the-store setting allows no grand gourmet airs. But you can taste the pure tradition, simple foods made with classical technique.
The menu here is drawn from her southern German heritage and his Croatian roots (the capital of the old Hapsburg Empire was a proper meeting place). So paprikash I expected; such a spectrum of schnitzel and an array of filet mignon, I did not.
Some dishes are not for all tastes. Mine, for instance, wants to like sauerbraten but rarely does. Here it was tough and dry and served primarily as garnish for wondrous red cabbage peppered with cinnamon and a dumpling of bread and potato where the sweet spices were gentler.
Schnitzels of pork and veal are easier to like. They ranged widely, topped with hams and cheeses, stuffed with prunes. Most surprising was jaeger schnitzel, with a mushroom sauce that smelled and tasted as if the namesake hunters had a successful day in the deep woods. Yet the mushrooms weren't fancy fare. Port and stock of course were evident, but I had to ask after the richest ingredient: ground almond.
Tournedoes, thicker beef cuts, came out just as moist and tender, even when cooked medium. These good steaks were made better as a la Budapest, with a demi-glace stock of onions and peppers. Again, familiar things done well.
In starters, I was happiest with another simple item, herring, creamed but still as brisk as a storm at sea. Escargot, however, were no treat, bland in an oily, salty dressing. Best appetizers would be steak tartare, the raw beef favorite of Mitteleurope (which knows from Tartars). To inquiring diners, Mrs. Klobucar sighs; she would make it the old-fashioned way, by hand and to order, but like duck and other special dishes, she needs a day's notice to give it proper attention.
I hope Cafe Vienna eventually gives us a broader taste of Europe's east, from Germany into the Balkans. The region's cooking holds an exciting intrigue of flavors and influences as well as the familiar hearty warmth.
Still I'm pleased with what we have. Besides, there is ample authenticity at meal's end, where I want to linger. Honest cooking makes confections of flour, chocolate, nuts and whipped cream, simpler but as rich as those of imperial pastry chefs, and skilled hands turn out a demitasse of decaf espresso creamier and rounder than that produced by the hippest New Age barista.
This is more than rustic comfort food or old-school gourmet. Pay attention and you'll taste the slow care and sophistication that is the base of fine cooking.
RESTAURANT REVIEW
Cafe Vienna
1353 Snell Isle Blvd.; St. Petersburg; (727) 823-6603
Hours: 5 to 9 p.m. Monday though Saturday.
Reservations: Accepted
Credit cards: AE, D, DC, MC, V
Details: Beer, wine; smoking at bar only
Wheelchair access: Good
Prices: $8.95 to $15.95
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