Kafeneon

Review

#Grentrance

Photo: Heribert Corn A hot summer evening on the Yppe. Absolutely every seat in absolutely every pub is taken, it feels like 5000 green voters are chilling out with beer, Aperol and white spritzer, children are running around, the bicycle situation can be described as "amsterdamesk". Things are a little quieter in the side streets. In Payergasse, for example, where a restaurant called Kafeneon opened a few weeks ago and keeps a very low profile. Three or four tiny tables on the sidewalk, a simple façade, an entrance door with a small staircase. Inside, cool Mediterranean terracotta floors and a shelf with Greek specialties. But then Renata Dietl arrives and the restraint is over. You learn that the woman with the fiery red hair was a chemist and pharmacist until recently, that the builder of her apartment is also the builder of the restaurant and that she more or less spontaneously decided to change her lifestyle. And that because she was married to a Greek and also liked being in Greece, she decided to open a Greek restaurant. And that it was originally intended to be - as the name Kafeneon/Kafenio/Kafenion suggests - a café where you could have a drink and a few olives, but above all sit together and chat. But then her Greek friend Jula Georgiou got involved, and that was the end of "just olives". Jula, who comes from Patras, is an excellent and passionate cook. You don't necessarily have to stick to the Kafeneon menu, because the likelihood of something on it no longer being available is about as great as the likelihood of there being other wonderful things that aren't on it. That's what happened to us with the zucchini patties with yoghurt sauce and the taramo salata (okay, it wasn't on the menu either, but it was already out), but instead we had the wildest tzatziki in Ottakring, with lots of garlic and lots of olive oil, delicious, and a dish called spetzofai, a ragout made from three different peppers, crumbly bell pepper sausages, lots of garlic and lots of olive oil, even more delicious. If the names Kritamo and Tsitsiravla had meant anything to me, I would of course have gone for them: Sea fennel and cooked flowers from the wild pistachio tree. Anyway, moussaka was also great, cinnamon-spiced with allspice, and the flat pea puree fava with boiled octopus - typically Greek and rather firm to the bite. And the rose jelly, which she serves with fat yoghurt, is made by her cousin, Jula explains, and you can't get it anywhere else in Greece. And at the end, you have to drink a dark brown, bitter cinnamon liqueur and are altogether very happy. Summary: A new, small Greek restaurant that is much more Greek in its cheerful spontaneity than most other Greek restaurants. Kafeneon 16th, Payerg. 7, Tel. 0664/799 03 70, Tue-Fri 13-22, Sat 9-22

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