Professional Viennese in foreign lands were often appalled by the degree of ignorance which local gourmets professed for the subtleties of boiled beef. A Viennese would step into a restaurant in Germany or Switzerland, hired by the menu promising Rindfleiscb or Siedfleiscb. He would inquire hopefully what kind of Rindfleiscb they served, but the waiter would give hint a blank stare and say, “What do you mean, what kind? Rindfleiscb is Rindfleiscb.”
“I got so discouraged one day in Zurich that I wound up with a steak,” a Viennese said to me recently. “I felt utterly lost. Couldn't even ask for a roll, which we call Semmel in Vienna, but they insist on calling it Weckli in Zurich, and in Berlin it's a Weiss-brötcben. Before they start to unify Europe, we ought to unify the German language. Go and order a Tellerfleisch anywhere outside of Vienna. They don't even know what it is.” He sighed. “It's terrible.”
Tellerfleisch is another boiled beef specialty from the banks of the Danube. It is a soup plate filled two-thirds with clear beef soup, boiled carrots, split green onions, parsley, a piece of almost but-not-quite-boiled beef, and several slices of marrow, sprinkled with chopped chives. Tellerfleisch is always eaten between meals, never at mealtime. It comes closest an American New England boiled dinner or a French pot-au-feu, although the Viennese indignantly dismiss the foregoing dishes as incompetent imitations of the real, Viennese, McCoy. They don't recognize France's petite marmite, because it is cooked in an earthenware stockpot, with the necks and wings of fowl added, or that wonderful French specialty, bocuf saignant à la ficelle, rare beef with a string, which is a piece of filet tightly wrapped around with string, roasted quickly in a very hot oven, and dipped for sixty seconds—not fifty-eight or sixty-two, but sixty—in boiling consommé just before it is served. The meat is well done outside, and all the juices are kept inside the pinkish meat by the string and the trick of quick boiling. If the meat stays in the boiling consommé too long or if the slices are placed on cold plates, the meat becomes tough. One would think that such precision would appeal to Vienna's beef-eaters, but it doesn't, possibly because boeuf saignant is a French creation. Vienna's epicures were always fiercely nationalistic
There were two schools of cooking beef in Vienna. People who cared more about a strong soup than about the tender meat put the raw meat into cold water and let it cook on a slow fire. They added parsley, carrots, green onions, celery, salt and pepper. After an hour the white foam that had formed on top was skimmed off. Sometimes half an onion, fried on the open range plate, was put in to give the soup a dark color. If, on the other hand, you didn't care about a consommé and wanted your beef juicy and tender, you put it straight into boiling water and let it simmer. This procedure closes the pores of the meat and keeps all juices inside.
The Meissl and Schadn was hit by American bombs in March, 1915. A few weeks later the exuberant members of the liberating Red Army, for reasons known only to themselves, tossed gasoline-soaked rags and gas cans into the half-destroyed building and set fire to it. The hotel burned down. But the tradition that had made Meissl and Schadn a great eating place had come to an end long before. The Meissl and Schadn was a veritable creation of the Hapsburg monarchy. It lived and died with the Danube Empire. Under the formidable Heinrich it survived the hectic twenties, but when Heinrich died a couple of years later, the restaurant, and a way of life, were doomed.
“People would come in and ask for boiled beef.” a former habitué remembers. He added, with a shudder, “And they would get it.”
The second World War finished the place altogether. By 1944 there was no boiled beef at the restaurant. There was no beef at all in the starving city of Vienna, and a piece of horse meat was held in high esteem.
Marshall Plan aid has brought recovery to Austria's industry, but it has not revived Vienna's boiled beef tradition. Elderly Viennese report, with a severe sense of loss, iliac Vienna's butchers have all but forgotten the fine points of analyzing and cutting up a steer. These days most Viennese restaurants simply serve Rindfleiscb or Beinfleiscb, without any specification. The meat is raised, cut, and cooked without the loving care which made it such a treat. It is often tough and dry. served by ignorant waiters who recommend to their customers expensive “outside” dishes, such as Styrian pullet or imported lobster, and are more interested in the size of their tip than in the guest's palate. Restaurant owners, operating on the get-rich-quick principle (“Who knows—the Russians may take over Austria tomorrow!”), no longer keep herds of cattle inside sugar refineries. It wouldn't be profitable, they say; besides, many refineries are located in the Soviet zone of Austria. Even the salubrious, well-tasting Viennese Hocbquell water has deteriorated, since, owing to increased demands, it has been mixed with less salubrious, chlorinated Danube water. It no longer tastes like a mountain spring on a March morning.
Where Meissl and Schadn once stood, there is now an office building with no claim to gastronomic or any other fame. Most of Heinrich's habitués are dead, and the few survivors have been scattered to the winds by the last war. Once in a while two of them may run into each other at an undistinguished Viennese restaurant whose menu offers a Tafelipitz. a first-quality cut of boiled beef, which, the old habitués see at a glance, is really Kruspelspitz, a fourth-quality cut, somewhat comparable to an American chuck or round of beef.
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