Between Heinrich and his habitués there existed a highly civilized, strictly regulated protocol. Upon entering the restaurant the guest would be greeted by Heinrich—or, rather, by Heinrich's bent back expressing the exact degree of respect in which the guest was held. The depth of Heinrich's bow depended on the guest's social standing, his taste for, and his knowledge of, boiled beef, and his seniority. It took a man from twenty-five to thirty years to earn the full deep-bow. Such people were greeted by “Meine Verebrung, käss' die Hand.” which was breathed rather than whispered, and never spoken; Heinrich wasn't able to speak any more.
The guest would be taken to his table by one of Heinrich's captains. Each guest always had the same table and the same waiter. There was mutual respect between waiter and guest; when either one died, the other would go to his funeral. The waiter would hold the chair for the guest and wait until the guest was comfortably seated. One of Heinrich's axioms was that “a man doesn't enjoy his beef unless he sits well.” For a moment there-after, the waiter would stand at attention in front of the guest, going through the motion of waiting for the guest's order. That was mere politeness, of course. The waiter knew what the guest wanted, and the guest wouldn't dream of ever changing his standing order. The waiter would nod to the Speisen-ltäger, or Commis, who thereupon departed for the kitchen.
The Commis' order to the cooks had the highly personal flavor that distinguished all transactions at Meissl and Schadn. It would be “the Schulterscherzl for General D” or “Count H is waiting for his Kavalierspitz.” This implied a high degree of finickiness on the part of the habitué who wouldn't be satisfied with so narrow a definition as the Kavalierspitz; his refined palate demanded that he get his private, very special part of Kavalierspitz.
After a suitable interval the Commis would bring in the meat on a massive, covered silver plate. Some people would have a consomme before the meat; clear consommé was the only preceding dish Heinrich approved. The Commis was followed by the piccolo, an eight-year-old gnome wearing it tiny tuxedo and a toy bow tie. His job was to serve the garniture: horseradish, or Essigkren, mustard, pickles, boiled potatoes, boiled cabbage, spinach, or whatever else the guest desired with his meat. The classic way of eating boiled beef was to have only horseradish with it; the horseradish might be mixed with grated apple, which was called Apfelkren. Other garnishings were frowned upon by Heinrich.
A beverage waiter would appear and serve a glass of wine, beer, or water, depending on the guest's wish. Heinrich had no objection to the guest's drinking Vienna's Hochquell water, which came from the Schneeberg and was as cold and clear as a mountain spring on a March morning.
An elaborate ritual would then ensue. The waiter who had been standing motionless, watching his subordinates put the various plates on a small serving table next to the guest's table, would step forward, lift the cover off the silver plate, and perform the presentation of the meat. He would wait a moment for the guest's approval—or disapproval. This was another mere motion. Never, never would a guest dare beef about the beef. The waiter would serve the meat on a hot plate, put it on the table in front of the guest, make a step back and glance at Heinrich. Then the guest, in turn, would glance at Heinrich.
There followed a critical moment. Heinrich would review the table with a short, sweeping glance that would take in the meat, the garniture, the position of the water glass, Essigkren or Apfel-kren, salt, roll, toothpicks. It was hard to understand how he managed to see anything through the narrow slit of his almost closed eyelids; but see he did. He would give a slight nod of approval to the waiter, and to the guest. Only then would a genuine habitué begin to eat.
It has been said that words of prose were not adequate to express the delights of boiled beef at Meissl and Schadn. Many Austrian poets were moved to rhymed praise while they regaled themselves on a well-nigh perfect Hiefer-schwanzl. But poets, especially Austrian poets, are rarely given to tenacity of purpose, and somehow the poets forgot to write down their poems after they had left the restaurant Richard Strauss, an ardent devotee of the Beinfleiscb, often considered writing a tone poem about his favorite dish, but after he had finished writing his ballet “Schlagobers,” Whipped Cream, he thought that another major composition devoted to an Austrian specialty food might he misinterpreted by posterity and resented by his admirers in Germany, who, like most Germans, disliked Vienna. Strauss, not unaware of his considerable German royalties, dropped the project.
“Too bad he did,” one of his Viennese admirers said not long ago. “He was crazy about Beinfleiscb. Such a Tondicbtung might have surpassed the beauty of 'Death and Transfiguration'”.
There was a sound reason for the excellence of the beef served at Meissl and Schadn. The restaurant owned herds of cattle which were kept inside a large sugar refinery in a village north of Vienna. There the steers were fed on molasses and sugar-beet mash, which gave their meat its extraordinary marble texture, taste, tenderness, and juice. The animals were slaughtered just at the right time, and the meat was kept in the refrigerator from one to two weeks.
In Vienna, in those days, boiled beef was not a dish; it was a way of life. Citizens of the Danube capital, venturing from their home base into hostile, foreign lands where boiled beef was simply boiled beef, would take along Viennese cookbooks which contained the anatomical diagram of a steer, with numbered partitions and subdivisions indicating the Gustostückerln. This was a wise precaution, Viennese living abroad who went to a local butcher to get a special cut of beef often experienced difficulties when they told their exact wishes to the butcher, who didn't know what they were talking about. Even in German-Speaking countries, the technical expressions denoting various cuts of beef differ from land to land, Vienna's Tafelspitz, brisket, for instance, is called Tafelstück by the Germans and Huft by the German-speaking Swiss. A Viennese Beinfleiscb is called Zwer-cbricd in Germany and plat de côtes among the German-speaking Swiss. If the Viennese customer got nowhere with his butcher, he would go home and return with the diagram to show the butcher exactly what part he wanted.
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