Hannelore Bar & Living Room

Review

In the middle of the first

Club culture has arrived in the middle of society. Clubs such as Praterstraße or the various Martin Ho establishments hardly breathe underground anymore, and the possibility of visitors meeting their parents there is at least not ruled out. This is hard for all those organizers who consider underground to be an identity-forming component of this area of culture and see themselves robbed of their terminology by the mainstream. And that's fine for the profiteers of this trend, who reach a rapidly growing audience with their "clubs", whose establishments are getting bigger, more and higher in turnover, who can book DJ evergreens with powerful names and find an audience with politicians and high-circulation media.
Joachim Natschläger is a good example of the second category. He is currently regarded as one of the big movers and shakers in Vienna's nightlife scene, having run the Empire Club on the outskirts of Vienna Neustadt for two years, the Horst pop-up club in the former P1 in the city center until two years ago and currently both the Inc. in the former Ost-Klub on Schwarzenbergplatz and the O - the club in the former Albertina Passage. And because you can never be sure what will happen to clubs - both underground and mainstream - during a pandemic, he has now diversified into gastronomy.
Natschläger took over the ground floor restaurant above the Casanova Cabaret, which had struggled to survive for two years as a windowless gourmet restaurant called Blue Mustard, and turned it into Hannelore, a hybrid of bar, lounge and club. With a DJ, but without a dance floor, in other words, very well-behaved.
A pinch of colonial kitsch like in Planters, some moss on the walls like in Calea, plenty of rubber trees like in Botanical Garden, black walls with colorful pictures of birds and plants that we remember from the Birdyard - and a tree in the middle! We haven't seen that since the 90s.
When it comes to cocktails, highballs and spirits, they also tend to stick to the high street; there is a gin and tonic range with ten different blends of gins and bitter lemonades (€ 12.5 to € 15), the gimlet with freshly squeezed limes was okay (€ 13,-), the bartender does a good job of mixing the Dirty Martini, but the ingredient that this drink is all about - the olive water - is neglected, making it a very "clean" Dirty Martini (€ 14,-).
Incidentally, you'd better not be hungry in the Hannelore, the bar snacks have little wit, "Schnitzel Bites", for example, are pre-fabricated breaded pieces of meat that are defrosted in the microwave (€ 9.50). Will probably work anyway. At least for a while.
Summary:
One of the currently most successful organizers of mainstream clubs in Vienna is making a mainstream bar.

Hannelore, 1st, Dorotheergasse 6-8, Mon-Sat 5-4 pm, linktr.ee/hannelore.vienna

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