Café Mayer

Review

The Freyenmayer

What is special about Café Mayer in Gersthof? Obviously not the name, but the location in the middle of the most beautiful part of Gersthof, right at the end loop of the 40, more so, the idyllic sidewalk garden and the pleasant living room atmosphere, as well as the Parisian flair of the small café-pastry shop. What's more, Walter Mayer is not just some friendly suburban confectioner, but for many years was also a part-time general representative of the Trieste-based Illy roasting house in Victoria Homolka and Jakob Kaineder live diagonally opposite. Until recently, they were the main protagonists of the exceptional Freyenstein restaurant a few streets away. Founded in 2008 by Victoria's mother Eva Homolka, the charismatic star chef Meinrad Neunkirchner created a line of cuisine that today would be described as "bistronomy". After Neunkirchner's death in 2016, his young sous-chef Jakob Kaineder took over - and continued to do just as great a job as before. But now the Freyenstein has been sold, renovated, is now called Weinberg and is good anyway. Kaineder and Homolka, in turn, thought that this was probably the right time to do something of their own, something small. And since neighbor Mayer was struggling with a lack of staff and was only open at weekends, the café owner and the restaurateurs decided to merge: Team Kaineder during the week, Team Mayer at weekends.
Of course, this has its pitfalls, because not only do two accounts run in parallel, Café Mayer has many regulars, and the Währing regulars are also rather conservative, so the need to explain that there is now a different breakfast during the week than usual is a given, laughs Victoria Homolka. But Jakob Kaineder has set himself the goal of softening even the hardest bones with simply extremely good cuisine, not too complicated, not too exclusive, not too expensive, just very good. For example, roasted chanterelles with Heurigen and leaf salad or lake trout with creamed runner beans. Or a cold paradei soup, which was definitely the best cold paradei soup I've had in the last ten years, intense, light, with a very delicate, cool chili spiciness, served with a fried melanzani loaf, delicious (€ 6.80). Or the sweetbreads with porcini mushrooms stewed in tomatoes, so incredibly good, old Swede (€ 15.90), served with a glass of crémant, because it's just so French? A cozy suburban pastry shop with Parisian flair, but where you can suddenly eat like in a café in Paris.

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