Vollpension Generationencafé

Review

Grandma shows you

Photo: Heribert Corn Charlotte is 75 years old, trained as a seamstress, worked as a chambermaid at the Sacher, the Imperial and the Palais Schwarzenberg, then became a housekeeper for an emeritus professor before realizing that her pension was barely enough to live on.
Susanne is 55, had a vegetable stall at Yppenmarkt, then married and moved to Mauerbach and has two hobbies: tennis and baking. Each of the biographies of the 15 ladies who act as cooks, entertainers and beneficiaries in the new Vollpension restaurant project is unique. They have two things in common: on the one hand, they can bake - Charlotte just two different cakes, Susanne countless - and on the other, they can talk about their lives. It all started three years ago during Vienna Design Week, where there was also space for "social design" projects and the two Stitch brothers Mike Lanner and Moriz Piffl-Percevic submitted the idea of a coffee and cake pop-up that would employ single older women at risk of poverty. It was very successful, popped up five times, gave guest performances at the Forum Alpbach, toured as far as Switzerland, where Charlotte's two cakes were always met with great enthusiasm, she says. Last week, it became a real restaurant. The former crossover was cleared out with old furniture from flea markets, Caritas stock and sometimes even grandma's possessions, given new toilets and - if nothing else - accessibility. And also a large, open kitchen with four swivel-mounted, neon-lit baking pipes, where one of the grannies always bakes cakes during the day. Describing the complexity of the entire project - from intergenerational dialog to preventing loneliness and poverty in old age, to raising awareness of the difficulties faced by pensioners who want to earn a little extra money and, finally, preserving recipe knowledge - would go beyond the scope of this article. Not least because this is an occasional review. So: there is a chef, Paolo Grando, previously at Liebling and Schadekgasse, who works with all 15 grannies to develop their recipes. And because you don't always just want cake, the grannies take it in turns to cook typical grandma dishes: Szeged goulash, beef roulades or impeccable roasted dumplings with egg and salad (€ 8.90), which Paolo Grando and his kitchen team then cook for a month. It's almost like Hangar 7 in Salzburg, only with grandmas instead of international cooking gurus. By the way, Charlotte will soon be off due to a knee operation, but Zora comes from Bratislava to bake. Her honey cream slice is pretty amazing. To sum up: social projects are doable, Mr. Neighbour. And this one, with the 15 cheerful baking grannies, also works without any consternation. Vollpension 4, Schleifmühlg. 16 Tel. 0699/110 30 61 Tue, Wed 9-24, Thu-Sat 9-2, Sun 9-20

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