We reached the final destination of our Austrian trip. And that was none other than the 2 Michelin starred Landhaus Bacher situated in the picturesque Danube valley in Mautern, 80 kilometers from Vienna.
Of Mautern and of the Danube we could not see much, as at the time of our visit there was thick fog covering everything and temperature was 5 degrees Celsius outside. But to be honest with you …we didn’t go to enjoy the landscape, but rather to enjoy the culinary wonders there. It was always a mystery to me to imagine how can such a great restaurant – actually one of the country’s best restaurants- operates in a small, secluded little village where the head chef – Frau Lisl Wagner Bacher — even earned the Chef of the year title. In Mautern you can find a main street with a drugstore, a grocery shop, a bank branch and the best restaurant in the country. In Austria you will have surprises like that … without any doubt.
Landhaus Bacher seems to be a pleasant, simple countryside inn. At first sight it is more modest and more informal than its rivals in the capital. Waiters or waitresses are family members or friends from nearby villages, humble and kind… They take their craft very seriously and don’t feel pressured when they need to communicate in 5 or 6 different languages. We arrived early evening from Vienna, where we had a light fish and prawn lunch at Naschmarkt. It was all washed down by some white wine, but we made sure not to pack ourselves with a heavy lunch before we got down to our six course jubilee menu. We just give ourselves a little rest in the little hotel run by the family.Quite frankly, we were full after yesterday’s dinner and today’s seafood lunch. We need to have a proper nap in order to be able to give a clean and neat start to our supper. At that point – when we finally tuck ourselves into bed – someone knocks the door. A nice boy enters with two glasses
of grüner veltliner and with some tiny mince pie-like welcoming cakes. Thank you very much .. although very welcoming, that was not exactly what we wished for.
After a short puff we get dressed and walk into the other building’s restaurant where we are kindly awaited and led into a a cosily lit, stylishly modernised dining room, which is called the library room by the hosts. It is called this way as the room is filled with different kinds of cookery books: from an early edition of Larousse Gastronomique through Far-Eastern cook books to volumes describing the basics of Austrian home-cooking. Lighting circumstances are aimed at being pleasantly romantic, though they are also to blame for the low quality of my photos — for which I express my apologies. Such a supper would have deserved a quality camera, which I admit, I left home. I hope a proper description makes up for the lack of five star sights of meals taken with camera.
The Amuse Bouche arrives after some bread and butter. A blackened, baked meatball, avocado cream and a lemongrass-carrot-cappuccino. We are lucky to taste the Bacher’s experimenting spirit and experience their newborn Far-Eastern orientation. Throughout the duration of the menu this is the last – so called contemporary composition -, from now on … we are grazing on much more conservative pastures.
Our first course is lukewarm lobster salad with tender pea pods and raspberry and nut vinegar dressing. It is worth pointing out that are having the 30 years jubilee menu, which means that the biggest hits of this time period are chosen to cater to our taste buds. Lobster salad -by the way- is from 1984. The lobster meat is really lukewarm, this is how it best shows its soft, special, sweet taste. The salad next to it lacks a bit of character, until we dip it into the sauce. One of the interesting features of this course is that at that time when it was created, specialty vinegars and oils started spreading- raspberry, and other nutty vinegars counted as an interesting innovation .
Next course is a soup which is amazing . One of the big hits of 2003 is turnip-cream soup with parsley jelly and ham. In the middle of the plate there’s wild green parsley in an almost transparent parsley jelly cylinder along with small cuts of home-made ham. Upon this composition a warm, foamy, turnip cream soup is poured. What can I say? Perfect. A velouté must be exactly like this. The top of the soup is light and airy and because of this ideal proportion of cream soup- to foam, the course feels light. Best of all: the parsley jelly starts melting in warm soup and in the white sea green waves start to appear. Taste-wise it is also gorgeous when ham, parsley , turnip; three everyday ingredients meet in a subtle way, transform, merge . This can only can be described in superlatives.
From the same year come scallops with potato salad, a chive sabayon and a chanterelle creme. This course is also very simple in terms of ingredients: a meeting of strong earthy tastes in the form of the mushroom, potato and chive. A variation of the Austrian potato salad is indispensable in top gastronomy as well. It also appeared in Steiereck’s menu with goose liver accompanying it. Here, now it is served with fresh, sweet wafer thin scallops on top in a chive ‘bath’. As for the chanterelle, I have trouble remembering it… I do recall some caviar thrown in on the scallops.
This course offered the usual, homely Austrian flavours, but with a real twist. I was slightly disturbed by the overpowering presence of the potato salad’s taste at the expense of the sashimi like scallops. It may have been worth giving the scallops a little sear in a pan to strengthen the taste and the composition, but this is just an amateurs’s view. I should also admit that I have already seen such a course in a great French chef’s repertoire earlier..so I would not mark it as very original. (Or it may be that the French top chefs attend Mautern’s institution for post-gradual training.)
1997 must have been a good year for the pike-perch and cabbage in Mautern since our next fish course is a pike-perch from Lake Neusiedl, which is served with a garnish of cabbage and pumpkin filled cannelloni plus a Federspiel Riesling flavoured buerre blanc sauce. The Pike perch was excellent. Crispy skin, soft and flaky meat: the best fish course for a long time. Its a pity that it’s such a small portion. Pumpkin is in season now and it is married with the cabbage and encased in the cannelloni. Fresh, sweet, crispy, peachy ..that is what i noted down about the garnish.
Our fifth course is the first (and last) real meat course on the menu today. But what a meat this was! Frau Bacher claims that this course is her favourite, and the idea of it was conceived in her head, when she was presented with a dairy calf. She was so happy ,that she wished to use every little piece of it and this is how this dish was born in 1989. On the plate we can see different parts of the calf prepared in different ways: sirloin medallions, calf tongue, butter-schnitzel , -a special minced meat of Austria -, stuffed neck and fried gland … But that is all nothing, because in the middle of the plate lies a nice circle of macaroni which is doused with calf-jus. To cut the long story short: every little element of this course was perfect. It was great to have a simple meat with noodles and mushrooms, just like they do in the Monarchy elsewhere, but this was raised to a different standard. It was traditional in a highly superior fashion: a little bit of everything from the tongue, the gland and the famous Austrian Butterschnitzel and the melt-in-your-mouth tenderloin. Impeccable.
The perfect closing dish at the end is an apple, plum and grape pie on shortbread with butter and black walnut ice-cream. Yes, this is a kind of homely dessert which could be prepared by my grandma, too. But its pastry was so perfect with toasted-roasted almond pieces on the top. The fruit was so sweet and dense and so adorable together with the tarty nut ice cream that I was about to faint. Or it may have been because of the sixth course … I will never know. Though there was no cheese-cart and no pre-dessert, we still felt that there could have been no worthier end to our splendid supper here than this.
It is amazing how difficult it is to find any fault here either technically or flavour-wise or freshness-wise in all these courses. I may have changed the proportions a little in the scallop-course in favour of the scallops and not the potatoes. Or if f we consider the lobster and fish, maybe I’d have given more sauce with them. But these are basically petty grudges, and useless splitting of hairs. This meal of ours was close to perfection, surely deserving the 2 Michelin stars rating. Bacher- similarly to its rivals- revels in local raw materials and rustic dishes, but operates a much subtle kitchen, more French style, much lighter than its counterparts. The 30 years jubilee menu may seem to be based on old classics and may appear to be non-experimental nowadays. But don’t forget, that you can also find a 6 course vegetarian menu in the restaurant. In my view, the Austrian Star Wars is obviously won by Landhaus Bacher, now but I still haven’t visited Mraz or Ikarus. The order of the top Austrian establishments I have visited so far would look like this: Bacher, Steierereck, Bauer, Novelli, Fabios. Next year to be continued.
FOODPOLICE 