Die Kochdame

Review

The woman with the vegetables

Photo: Heribert Corn There must be something about this stretch of Wiedner Hauptstraße that attracts eateries that do without something. It probably started with the small vegetarian bistro "Frühstück und Mittag bei mir" (now called Venga), soon followed by the Allergiker-Café, where you can get cakes without milk, flour and eggs, and then there was even Vienna's first and only hemp milk bar - albeit only briefly.
Of course, with Herknerin, Chang, Schönberger, May Lee, Wieden Bräu and hopefully soon the Winzerkönigin again, this stretch of Wiedner Hauptstraße is generally quite dense in terms of gastronomy, but the number of places where you can go without is still remarkable. Of course, Judith Ausserbrunner's new veggie takeaway "Die Kochdame" is not primarily about going without, but about sustainability. Ms Ausserbrunner grew up in Burgenland and learned to appreciate the value of ingredients that come from the immediate vicinity at her parents' wine tavern. She became an ecologist specializing in environmental biotechnology, had a research position at the University of Vienna, but was rationalized out of it and therefore decided to devote herself to her passion for vegetarian cooking. First in the context of catering with the well-known event chef Parvin Razavi, then in the unfortunately very short-lived snack bar project "Neustiftgasse 21". "I certainly know my way around sustainability," she says, but by no means wants to be missionary with her vegetarian cuisine. The conversion of a former tobacconist's in the oldest apartment building in the fourth district took a long time, and the restaurant was not particularly large. But after all, the chef's menu is rather small: a salad, a soup, a pasta, another main course, homemade lemonade, beer from the small start-up brewery Rodauner, that's enough. Instead of photographing her dishes, Judith Ausserbrunner presents them in a display case, which is a nice touch, but pretty much every meal loses its attractiveness dramatically after half an hour, and you can actually imagine pasta with tomato sugo or lamb's lettuce just fine as it is. The salad with apple, fennel and a fresh mustard marinade was great (€ 5.90/7.90), while the fusilli with tomato and thyme pesto, pine nuts and sheep's cheese was rather good (€ 8.90). The colorful "Alpine curry" made from beet, Chioggia turnips, blue potatoes and mountain lentils with saffron rice is really great - lots of vegetarian flavor for the money (€ 8.90). And speaking of money: If you bring your own dishes, you save ten cents, and if you come after 3 p.m. on Friday, you get a 13 percent discount, "because I don't want to throw away food".
To sum up: a tiny veggie restaurant where you can get your food or eat on the spot, and where sustainability plays a major role. Die Kochdame 4th, Wiedner Hauptstr. 37 Tel. 0660/862 90 01 Mon-Fri 11.30-16 www.facebook.com/diekochdame/

More in Vegan
Food & Drink in Vienna