In America, few people think of boiled beef as a gastronomic treat, but in Vienna, the capital of Austria, there was not so long ago a restaurant which was held in high esteem by local epicures for its boiled beef—twenty-four different kinds of it. The restaurant was Meissl and Schadn, a place of international reputation, and the boiled beef specialties of the house were called Tafelspitz, Tafeldeckel, Rieddekel, Boinfleisch, Rippenfleishb, Kavalierspitz, Kruspelspitz, Hieferscbwanzl, Schultencbwanzl, Sebulterscberzl, Mageres Meisel (or Mäuserl), Fettes Meisel, Zwerchried, Mittleres Kügerl, Dueunes Kügerl, Dickes Kugerl, Bröserlfleiscb, Ausgelöstes, Brustkern, Brustfleiscb, Weisses Scberzl, Scbwarzes Seberzl, Zapfen, and Ortscbwanzl.
The terminology was bound to stump anyone who had not spent the first half of his adult life within the city limits of Vienna. It was concise and ambiguous at the same time; even Viennese patriarchs did not always agree exactly where the Weisses Seberzl ended and the Ortscbwanzl began. Fellow Austrians from the dark, Alpine hinterlands of Salzburg and Tyrol rarely knew the fine points of distinction between, say, Tafelspitz, Scbwarzes Seberzl, and Hieferscbwanzl—all referred to in America, with extreme vagueness, as brisket or plate of beef—or between the various Kügerls. Old-time Viennese butchers with the self-respect and the steady hand of distinguished surgeons were able to dissect the carcass of a steer into thirty-two different cuts and four grades of meat. Among the first-quality cuts were not only tenderloin, porterhouse, sirloin, and prime rib of beef, as elsewhere, but also fine cuts used exclusively for boiling: two Scberzls, two Scbwanzls, and Tafelspitz. In old Vienna, unlike present-day America, where a steer is cut up in a less complicated, altogether different manner, only the very best beef was considered good enough to be boiled.
You had to be a butcher, a veterinarian, or a Meissl and Schadn habitué of long standing to know the exact characteristics of these delicacies, Gustostückerln, as the Viennese called them with affectionate delight. Many so-called Viennese were not born in Vienna but hailed from the Austro-Hungarian provinces of Upper Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia, Bohemia, and Moravia (even today some pages of the Vienna telephone directory contain as many Czech names as the Prague directory does). Naturally, such Viennese were somewhat touchy about their un-Viénnese ancestry and tried to compensate for it in various ways. One way was to display a scholarly knowledge of the technical terms for boiled beef. It was almost like the coded parlance of an exclusive club. In Vienna, a person who couldn't talk learnedly about at least a dozen different cuts of boiled beef didn't belong, no matter how much money he'd made or even if the Kaiser had awarded him the title of Hofrat (court councilor) or Kommerzienrat.
The guests of Meissl and Schadn were thoroughly familiar with the physical build of a steer and knew the exact anatomical location, and the distinctive taste, of Kügerls, Seberzls, and Scbuanzlt. At Meissl and Schadn, precision and traditionalism were the keynote. You didn't order merely boiled beef any more than you would step into Tiffany's and ask for a stone; you made it quite clear exactly what you wanted. If you happened to be a habitué of the house, you didn't have to order, for they would know what you wanted. A Meissl and Schadn habitué never changed his favorite cut of boiled beef.
The restaurant was part of the famous Hotel Meissl and Schadn on Hoher Markt, which was popular with incognito potentates for discreet service and excellent accommodations. It was an old-fashioned place with highly personalized service. The chambermaids looked like dignified abbesses and were known to everybody by their first names. They knew the sleeping habits of every guest who had been there in the past twenty years. If you came to Meissl and Schadn after an absence of several years, you might find a small, hard pillow under your head because the maid still remembered that you liked to sleep hard.
There were really two restaurants, the Scbwemme on the ground floor—a plebeian place with low prices and checkered tablecloths—and the de luxe Restaurant on the second floor with high prices and tablecloths that were not just white, but snow-white damask. The upper regions were under the command of the great Heinrich, who was already a venerable octogenarian when I first saw him in the late twenties.
He was a corpulent man with the pink cheeks of a baby and the wisdom of a Biblical patriarch. His hands and jowls were sagging down and he had serious trouble keeping his eyes open. He never budged from his command post near the door, where he could overlook all tables. There he would stand like an admiral on the bridge of his flagship surveying the units of his fleet. Austria had only a small navy until the end of the first World War and none at all afterwards, and few people in Vienna had ever seen an admiral, but everybody agreed that Heinrich looked more like an admiral than many a real one. Once in a while, it was said, his pulse stopped beating and his eyelids would droop, and he would remain in a strange state, suspended between life and death, but the défilé of the waiters carrying silver plates with various cuts of boiled beef never failed to revive him.
Heinrich had spent his life in the service of emperors, kings, archdukes, Hofräte, artists, and generals, bowing to them, kissing the hands of their ladies, or wives. His bent back had taken on a distinct curvature reflecting the fine nuances of his reverence, from the impersonal half-bow with which he would dispose of the contemptible nouveaux riches of the black-marketeering years after the first World War to the affectionate deep-bow which was reserved for his old habitués, impoverished court councilors and aristocrats living from the sale of one painting to the next.
Pinterest
