Culture & Food> What's Cooking in Austria

Image: The chocolate glazed Sacher Torte
Image by: Subpop77

Text by: Tanya Munshi

Austrian cuisine is varied and as you move along it's different corners, depending on its proximity to its neighbors, the cuisines will vary. With a Eurail pass, see a part of the world, that you only read in text books. Better still, get a flavour of a country as rich as Austria.

A mixture of cultures, through permutations and combinations from France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain, to Slovakia and Serbia - its an endless list that goes on and on. Austrian cuisine is influenced by the agriculture and cuisines of Bundeslander. Since Burgenland lies close to Hungary, the cuisine includes chicken, geese and farm produced fruits. The popular ones are bakes like Buergenlandisches Erdbeerkoch, which is a strawberry baked desert or the Buergenlandische Gaenseleber that is goose liver with onions.

Ham is a popular and a staple diet, topped with lots of herbs, spices and veggies. The Austrian cured ham, chicken stuffed with roasted herb or baked bread with saffron gravy are some of the dishes worth trying out.

Owing to the European history, Austrian cuisine is a mix of both ethnic and international flavors. It includes breaded veal cutlet known as the Wiener Schnitzel, paprika beef stew called the Fiaker Goulash and the chocolate glazed cake the Sacher Torte.

And what do you know; a typical Austrian meal consists of a two to a seven course meal. Starting from an appetizer, soup, main course, with a raw/ cooked side dish, that ends with a dessert which would either be a baked dish or warm/ cold after meal sweet.

Note: Rail Pass and Rail Europe both have online booking for cheap point to point and select eurail passes.