Filmbar

Review

Monte Ofilmio

Photo: Heribert Corn What the square in front of the Albertina is: a launch pad for hackney carriages, a fixed point for school excursions and generally a tourist hotspot. There was only one place that seemed completely insignificant in terms of foreign traffic: the hidden, wonderfully gloomy bar of the Film Museum, which was only open sporadically in its early years, but became a really good place after its expansion and addition of two black leather fetish booths in 2008.
Two weeks ago, this highly concentrated place got new operators: Luca and Dario Formisano, who opened a small delicatessen called Monte Ofelio in Obere Augartenstraße in September 2016, creating a culmination of Italian joie de vivre that had never been seen before in Vienna. Everyone here is cheerful and Italian, including the Viennese. And how does this Italianità affect the film bar in the Film Museum? Fundamentally. First of all by playing good music, but above all through the two ladies behind the bar, Martina Ingegno, previously manager of Monte Ofelio, and Isabella Lombardo, one of the best bartenders in the city, both equally blessed with charisma and skill in the preparation of Americano, Negroni, Negroni Spagliato and other more or less bitter cocktails. And speaking of bitter: there is also a new coffee machine, a classic far removed from current barista wet dreams, but the milk frothing performance has won him over, says Luca Formisano. However, the Caffè Verrè espresso is perhaps better drunk pure and without milk - it's gigantic! And if you drink it "al banco", at the counter, it only costs 1.50 euros. And if you prefer to drink coffee without coffee, for example because you're a small child, there's milk foam with cocoa powder, which is called a "baby cappuccino". And if you're not a small child, you can also add a fabulous cocktail called "Red Berry", which Isabella Lombardo mixes together from muscat grapes, apple, Hernals ginger liqueur and a few other things that I can't remember now.
Until the toaster is installed, which the film bar ladies will use to turn discarded bread from the Joseph bakery opposite into purist Italian snacks with prosciutto and parmesan, the only things on offer for the time being are potato chips and taralli. These are wonderfully crumbly, insanely dry dough rings from southern Italy that you can't keep your hands off, but which also make you very, very thirsty. For a Cynar Spritz, for example, the Coca-Cola of Italophile bohemians. "To sum up: a good old film bar that has been taken over and become one of the first cocktail and espresso addresses in the city. Monte Ofelio Filmbar 1, Augustinerstr. 1, Tel. 0664/521 55 73, daily 12-24 hrs,

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