Spelunke

Review

This is what news tastes like

Photo: Heribert Corn In 2001, the news publisher moved from the Galaxy Tower in Praterstrasse to Hans Hollein's so-called Media Tower. And it wasn't just a little bit crooked, it also had a bay window, which from then on was to be the magazine's "war room", and it had a huge, one million euro screen placed on top, from which the headlines of News & Co beamed brightly over the whole city day and night. But history takes its course, News-Verlag was taken over by redeveloper Horst Pirker, 110 jobs were cut last year, so you don't need a whole tower block and a war room any more. And there was also plenty of free space on the ground floor, which was soon taken up by Werner Helnwein and Monika Wlaschek, who have been running the noble Klee hut on Hanslteich for five years. The publishing house would have liked it to have been a kind of Gusto café (the cooking magazine Gusto comes from the News publishing house), but Helnwein and Wlaschek were probably not so keen on that. Instead, they browsed a bit on Pinterest, visited Hamburg and Berlin, then decided to actually open a place called Spelunke and make it look like something out of a Hollywood movie: with a massive bar made of layered wooden slats and eight sparkling copper beer barrels overhead, with graffiti the size of a movie screen by artist Akira Sakurai, with fat leather furniture, a DJ booth and at least four different experience areas.
Of course, you can disagree about the name, but not about the fact that the restaurant is extremely spacious, with plenty of room, great lighting and the leaning Hollein girder columns perfectly integrated into the overall picture. And the food is not bad at all. Marinated melanzani with shiitake mushrooms, homemade hummus and smoked olive oil, for example (€ 9.50), and even if the mayonnaise for the beef tartare didn't need to be truffled - I've had worse (€ 14.50). The spicy beef salad with paprika and hoisin sauce is perhaps not very exciting (€ 14.50), but the oven-roasted cauliflower with béarnaise sauce and butter crumbs - Miznon meets grandmother - was more fun (€ 13.50). You can safely skip the vegan spaghetti bolognese, but you should go for the Steckerlfisch - the icon dish of the house - even though it's mackerel (chef Alexander Pochlatko: "In Upper Austria, all children believe that mackerel comes from the Danube ..."). It's fried, grilled and smoked, and especially in combination with this spicy red sauce, it's definitely a good mackerel (€ 17.50). So now you can eat news too. And it doesn't taste bad at all. Summary: The operators of Klee am Hanslteich have opened a city restaurant with a silly name, great outfit and colourful, trendy cuisine. Spelunke 2, Taborstr. 1-3 Tel. 01/212 41 51 Mon-Sun 11am-2pm

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