When it’s the weekend. When the weather is sunny. And when you’ve spent all afternoon in a beer garden. Eat Kaiserschmarrn.
That’s exactly what we did. And it was great.
Colleagues of mine were spending some time in Salzburg. They were over from the US and had never heard of Kaiserschmarrn (despite Buzz Feed together with LA based but Austrian born chef Wolfgang Puck creating a viral video about the dish).
It was a 30-degree weekend in Salzburg, and we opted to have a non-mountain, non-lake day, and explore the city. You can definitely ‘do’ Salzburg without booking onto an organized tour or immersing yourself into the sea of tourists that swarm the city. All you need to do is carefully select the places that show off Salzburg for what it really is, and plan your day around these stops.
First for us was brunch, at the famous Café Fingerlos followed by a walk through the dwarf statues and mazes within a secret garden, which, despite being right next to Mirabell Gardens, keeps itself hidden from the masses. After stopping at 220 Grad for some iced coffee, we continued on to Stieglbrauwelt’s courtyard beergarden, where we soaked up the shade and sampled many-a-beer.
By this point we were pretty tired, the sun was strong and it was a good while since our brunch. We headed up to the shady Mönchsberg – a surprisingly vast park area on the top of the ‘hill’ that towers over the old town. Up on the top there are lots of paths to explore, as well as M32 (museum and café) and the fortress. Tucked away in the middle is Stadt Alm, a quaint gasthaus, with a small inside cabin area and a good amount of outside seating overlooking Salzburg.
The menu is quite extensive here, but of course we ordered the Kaiserschmarrn. A plateful arrived laden with icing sugar dusting, and a pot of Zwetschgen compote, garnished with mint. The Zwetschgen compote was really great – compared with other Kaiserschmarrn I’ve tried, the alcohol taste was pungent. I enjoyed this, as it the flavor melted the plum skin and non-blended chunks of fruit into the sweet plum juice. Although the pancake mixture had a nice vanilla taste to it, the texture let it down slightly – it was neither fluffy nor crispy, instead it was something between the two, with no variation to it. The result was chewy pancake pieces. Digging for the smaller and crispy pieces in the bottom of the dish and lathering these in the sauce was the best way to eat this Kaiserschmarrn.
I would definitely recommend this place to eat, and when I return I will take the desert again (fully aware that the texture easily changes day-by-day, dish-by-dish), as the views and flavor meant it was still an enjoyable and satisfying Kaiserschmarrn.
Check out Stadt Alm here.
The Schmarrn Kaiserin 