The news that the Hotel Sacher, in Vienna, is celebrating the 175th anniversary of its celebrated Sacher torte, of which 360,000 are baked by the Sacher group annually at its Vienna bakery, brought back a distant memory. On a scorching August afternoon in 1976, I ate the best Wiener schnitzel I've ever had in the stultifying and decidedly pre-Freudian dining room of the Sacher. Mom insisted that my two brothers and I wear our wrinkled Madras jackets and Rooster knit ties for the occasion, and at the end of the meal we dithered over whether or not to have the hotel's famous Sacher torte, a chocolateiced cake with two layers of almond-flour-filled sponge separated by apricot jam. Instead, we enjoyed the equivalent of a Del Monte fruit cocktail at the bottom of a gold-leaf-flecked souffle Rothschild and then bought a Sacher torte in a white wooden box to carry from Vienna to relatives in Zurich. The cake sat on Mom's knees during the nine-hour train ride and she repeatedly rebuffed the suggestions of three hungry adolescent boys that we try just a little piece before arriving, creating all the usual suspense surrounding any forbidden fruit. My fear was that cousin Earl's thrifty Swiss wife, Sylvia, would not serve the cake during the five days that we stayed with them, but she did. And so it was that we sampled what my brothers and I immediately dubbed "soccer torte," since it was as dry and heavy as a soccer ball. Many years later, in a hotel in Mayerling, however, I sampled a sublime Sacher torte. So I'd almost be willing to buy the electric drill necessary to fit any original Sacher torte with the appropriate 175 birthday candles.
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