Crazy Khinkali

Review

Tel Aviv in the Hofmühlgasse

These pages are starting to look like a Gumpendorfer Strasse infomercial, but there are so many great new things happening there: Kia's Kitchen with the great Brazilian stews and the really good bean salad, the X.O. Grill where I got a world-class burger last week. Grill, where I got a burger last week that was actually world class.
In summer, there was the French Ma Belle and the best patisserie in town, Peti Pari, and last but not least, Vienna's only cool bubbly bar, Frau Bernhard, and Kuishimbo (both opened in Esterházygasse in 2018).
At the end of last year, something came along that wasn't expected because it's not high on the trend agenda: crêpes.
Actually, Royi Shwartz's little crêperie is as trendy as it gets: firstly, the likeable man comes from Tel Aviv, secondly, he makes his crêpes from sourdough that he has prepared himself and developed over many years - 1417 trials - and thirdly, he ferments everything that's left over and uses every scrap of any leftovers to make something new.
What more can one say: the man has even tried to give a new meaning to the wilted flowers from his restaurant, fermented and pulverized. And that's not the end of Royi Shwartz's amazingness.
Like when he talks about how he's had a career in some of the best gourmet restaurants in Europe and the U.S. and has had "stints" (unpaid work stints that chefs do with highly decorated chefs to learn something and brush up on their resumes) with no less than 27 of the really big names.
And that he then thought that the direct contact with his guests, working in front of them, the immediate reaction to his creations is more his thing and that's why he started a food truck ten years ago and then ran a street food place in Tel Aviv.
Last year he came to Vienna, found a small restaurant, set up the basement as a fermentation lab.
And makes everything himself that can be made: the panettone and the pears poached in Moscato d'Asti for the crêpe with chestnuts (€ 9.50), the gianduja or the red pepper sauce, which he combines with (self-)grilled artichoke hearts, burrata and salad (€ 11.50).
Or the combination of home-dried, roasted, fermented and marinated mushrooms that comes with (home) dried tomatoes, baby spinach, pesto and Gruyere on the best crêpe you could ever eat in Vienna (€ 11,50).
In the special cardboard box they stay warm and, if you transport them horizontally, even nice.
Résumé:
How could we do without crêpes like this? Grandiose take-away food with Tel Aviv appeal.

Royi's Crêperie 6th, Hofmühlg. 18, tel. 0655/65 46 62 73, Wed-Sat 11am-1pm, www.facebook.com/creperieil

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