Café Telegraph

Review

Eggs Pope Benedict

Photo: Heribert Corn Back in school, the cool ones never ate breakfast. The cool ones smoked on the platform while we waited for the train. Not me, I was never cool, I ate the jam sandwich that didn't turn out at home. A childhood trauma that I now compensate for by taking an hour for breakfast, nibbling on the finest organic toast with French salted butter and exquisite jams from the hands of righteous jam chefs, sheep's milk yoghurt with berries and East Frisian tea and freshly squeezed Tarocco from Nino Crupi. That's all very important, the day can start after that, not before. The cool ones don't smoke today, but they do have breakfast. Out of the house, of course, because breakfast at home is still uncool anyway, Zollergasse and Kirchengasse are a single breakfast area, the whole university quarter is a spacious breakfast zone, people eat breakfast everywhere as if there were no lunch.
Now also in a former post office branch in Garnisongasse, aptly named Café Telegraph, which with its tiled floor, gray shelves and gray benches looks a bit as if you could actually pick up a parcel there, but actually sets out to offer the city the most complete early meal.
Which is not so easy, because the level of acai bowls, porridge and avocado toast in Vienna is already close to the absolute saturation point, which is why the Telegraph offers so much more than the Blaustern, Stadtkind, Figar, Café Français and whatever else the breakfast huts are called. There is Russian breakfast "from the tin", Carinthian frigga, real pancakes, huevos rancheros, babaganoush and the English ensemble, there are six different omelettes, five different egg dishes, four different eggs benedict and three different bowls, plus a range of pretty éclairs is baked daily and they even prepare croque monsieur and madame, very good.
So in terms of quantity, all respect, but also in terms of quality, because the bread comes from Kasses, the ham from Thum, the eggs from organic free-range farms and the coffee from Süßmund.
Unfortunately, the "Ahoy sailor" - minced meat rolls with potato salad - was out of stock, but the Ukrainian curd cheese cakes "Syrniki" with sour cream, honey and berries turned out to be really delicious (€ 6.20) and the classic Eggs Benedict with ham and light hollandaise on actual English muffins were more or less perfect (€ 8.50).
Okay, the café au lait had too much milk, and the lack of small goulash and white sausages in all this may seem strange. But that's probably not cool at the moment, I don't know... Summary: Another contender for the most complete breakfast in town, and fortunately not always the same stuff. Café Telegraph 9th, Garnisong. 7 Tel. 0664/144 55 81 Mon-Fri 8am-7pm, Sat, Sun 9am-3pm

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