Kaffee Rösterei Hawelka

Review

All of Vienna is on caffeine

Photo: Heribert Corn Coffee is currently changing its social status. Away from the mass drug on the one hand and the underground fetish of tattooed baristas on the other, the hot beverage is settling firmly in the middle of the style-conscious consumer society. In a way, coffee is the new Prosecco. One of the founders of this phenomenon was the Trieste-based coffee roasting company Illy, which turned espresso into a cult drink at the end of the 1980s with a rigorous quality policy (only Arabica beans, only first-class origins, only selected gastronomy, designer cups by Matteo Thun ...). The strategy was so incredibly successful that Illy grew extremely quickly and soon Illy coffee was everywhere, even on supermarket shelves. A few years ago, a capsule coffee was launched on the market. In any case, the coffee roaster from Trieste's latest coup is a franchise-based system café, one of which has just opened in Vienna's city center. With cheap furniture, Italian hits from the loudspeakers and a menu featuring a few more or less Italian dishes. Tomato soup, for example, 100 percent convenience (€ 6.00), or an avocado and salmon salad that you could just as easily get at a highway service station (€ 9.90). The espresso, by the way, is stale and thin. Let's put it this way: it's hard to imagine that the charismatic Ernesto Illy, who died in 2008, would have liked this. At the same time, one of the most traditional and well-known Viennese coffee houses became a coffee roaster. This means that Hawelka has actually been roasting coffee in the 23rd district for seven years anyway, but now it has opened its own sales outlet with a coffee bar. Because until now, people didn't necessarily go to Hawelka to drink good coffee, but rather to be at Hawelka. The new Hawelka coffee roastery diagonally opposite gives a completely different impression. The northern Italian architect Oliviero Baldini was obviously inspired by the Loos Bar and turned a narrow room into a coffee cathedral thanks to mirroring in all directions. Finest materials, great workmanship, wow. Adrian Galambos, who already made great espresso at Bar Italia, transforms the six different roasts into really impressively good coffee: the "Melange" bean blend is hazelnutty and delicate (which can also be drunk as an espresso), the "Mocha" blend is chocolatey and dense, and the beans from Cuba are fruity and acidic. The idea of serving the legendary Hawelka Buchteln here was unfortunately abandoned. It's a shame, but Hawelka has never served coffee this good before. Let's put it this way: Josefine and Leopold Hawelka would have every reason to be proud. Summary: two espressos in new city cafés, one surprisingly bad, one surprisingly good. Illycaffè 1, Habsburgerg. 14, Tel. 01/295 10 10, daily 8am-8pm Kaffee Rösterei Hawelka 1st, Dorotheerg. 7, Tue-Sun 10am-6pm

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