Typical food in Austria: 15 dishes to try, 7 I ate myself

Typical food in Austria is built to keep active people going through cold winters: fried cheese dumplings, pan-fried potatoes with bacon and egg, boiled beef in its own broth, and a shredded pancake big enough to count as dinner. I love food. Man, do I love food. But I usually only eat small portions of it. All day long, that is. So when I got to Austria and saw the gigantic portions there, I knew I had to adapt. After you’ve taken an hour or two to digest, I think that is.

Now, the portions of the food in Austria might have been a bit oversized for me, but I did eat some delicious things while I was there and I tried a whole range of new dishes to refill my energy levels after doing some winter activities.

Not all of these dishes were typically Austrian, but I do want to share them with you so that you can try them on your Austrian holidays. The first seven are the ones I ate myself on a trip through Tyrol. The rest are the classics you will meet on almost every Austrian menu, and I have added what each one actually is, so you know what is arriving at the table.

Food in Austria: let’s dig in!

The seven dishes below are the ones I ate on my own trip, in the order I met them. Each one comes with what it is made of and how it turns up on a menu, because Austrian menus rarely translate themselves.

1. Kaiserschmarrn

Kaiserschmarrn is a thick, shredded pancake torn into pieces in the pan, dusted with icing sugar and eaten as a dessert or as a full lunch. Kaiserschmarrn tastes eggier and richer than a crêpe, and it comes with preserved or fresh fruit on the side. I had mine with apple mousse. Yum.

The name comes from the Austrian emperor: Kaiser means emperor and Schmarrn is a colloquial word for a mess or a mishmash. Franz Joseph I, who ruled from 1848 to 1916, had a serious sweet tooth and the dish was named for him.

I’ve also tried a more sophisticated version of Kaiserschmarrn once but must say I liked the original better.

Want to try your hand at Austrian desserts at home? Toni Mörwald and Christoph Wagner’s Austrian Desserts cookbook collects more than 400 cakes, pastries, strudels, tortes and candies, and it comes in Kindle, hardcover and paperback.

2. Ribs

Ribs are not a typically Austrian dish, but they are all over Tyrolean menus and they were my first proper dinner on the trip. The first night I was in Austria I went to a place that served big slabs of ribs on slices of a tree trunk.

I’m not a big meat eater, but these ribs were very good. They came with a simple salad and some fries, and I didn’t even touch the fries because, again, the portions were so huge that it felt like a waste to eat anything but the meat. I did have some salad, though. You know, to compensate.

3. Schlutzkrapferl Tris

Schlutzkrapfen are half-moon filled pasta from Tyrol, closer to mezzelune than to ravioli, usually stuffed with spinach and a soft curd cheese and served with melted butter. Schlutzkrapfen turn up on Italian-influenced menus as a “tris”, which simply means a plate with three different fillings.

Mine had spinach, pumpkin and Austrian cheese, served with spring onions in melted butter. Delicious, but heavy. Definitely not something you want when you’re on a diet.

4. Kaspressknödel

Kaspressknödel are flat, pan-fried cheese dumplings from Tyrol, made from stale bread, cheese, egg and herbs, pressed into discs and browned in butter. Kaspressknödel are usually served either floating in a clear beef broth or next to a salad, and one of them will keep you full for hours. Seriously.

I always thought dumplings were an Asian thing, but as it turns out they are also typical food in Austria. I had mine in soup.

5. Schnapps

Schnapps in Austria means clear fruit brandy, distilled from apricots, pears, plums, gentian root or almost anything else that grows, and it usually lands around 40% alcohol. Schnapps is what a Tyrolean meal ends with rather than what it starts with.

I rarely drink alcohol and don’t like the taste of it, so I was a bit wary of doing a tasting. Now, it is far too strong for me, but I had a great time, because before I got to try several flavors I was given a set of little bottles with scents in them and had to guess what each scent was. So much fun.

Afterward, when I got my Schnapps, I also tried guessing the flavor. Sometimes you could tell, sometimes it was hard. One time I got a Schnapps that had the same flavor as one of the scents I’d smelled but didn’t smell anything like it. Pretty interesting.

6. Tiroler Gröstl

Tiroler Gröstl is a pan of sliced potatoes fried with onion and bacon or leftover roast, topped with a fried egg, and it is the Tyrolean answer to a hearty lunch. Tiroler Gröstl was the first thing I ate when I arrived in Austria.

I’d been traveling for almost 8 hours and was starving when I made it to my hotel in St Johann in Tirol. I needed a decent meal, and this pan of potatoes, bacon and egg definitely was decent. I tried my best to finish it because it was so good, but had to acknowledge defeat near the end.

One note if you go looking for that hotel: it opened as the Adeo Alpin and now trades as the COOEE alpin Hotel Kitzbüheler Alpen, on Speckbacherstraße in St Johann in Tirol, so an older guide will send you searching for a name that no longer exists. It still sits at the foot of the Kitzbüheler Alpen ski area, so check dates at the COOEE alpin Hotel Kitzbüheler Alpen if you want to eat your Gröstl where I did.

7. Hamburger

A hamburger is not traditional Austrian food, I know, but sometimes you just crave something. After three typically Austrian lunches and two typically Austrian dinners, I needed this, and it was very good. The meat was juicy and full of flavor, which coming from someone who barely eats meat is saying something.

Austria has more than one cuisine, because every region cooks its own dishes and puts its own spin on the shared ones using local ingredients. The eight dishes below are the ones you will meet again and again, whether you are looking for recipe ideas or building a list of things to order on your next trip.

More Austrian traditional foods you can’t miss

The eight dishes below are the Austrian classics, listed with what each one is, where it comes from and when you are most likely to find it. None of these were on my Tyrol trip, so treat them as the menu-reading guide rather than as my own tasting notes.

8. Martinigans

Martinigans is roast goose with an aromatic stuffing, and it appears on Austrian menus for a few weeks around 11 November. If you’re visiting Austria in November, make sure to try it.

The name comes from Martins-Gans, or St Martin’s goose, prepared for the feast of St Martin on 11 November. The custom goes back centuries, and the goose was traditionally the last big meal before the run-up to Christmas.

9. Riebel

Riebel is a Vorarlberg breakfast dish of cornmeal cooked in milk until firm, then crumbled and fried in butter until the pieces go golden. Riebel is filling, cheap and about as regional as Austrian food gets, since it depends on Riebelmais, an old local maize.

Riebel can be made sweet or savory and it works for lunch or dinner as well. The sweet version is served with applesauce, cheese and fruit, and it is often just dusted with sugar and cinnamon. The savory version comes with mushrooms and cheese alongside a meat dish.

10. Strauben

Strauben is the Tyrolean funnel cake: a loose batter poured in a spiral into hot oil, fried until crisp, and served warm. Strauben belongs to fairs and festivals rather than restaurants, so look for it at a Christmas market or a village celebration.

The batter is simple, calling for flour, egg yolks and salt, with some recipes adding white wine or fruit schnapps. Traditionally it is served with applesauce and dusted with icing sugar.

11. Mohnnudeln

Mohnnudeln are thick potato dumplings rolled into short logs, tossed in ground poppy seeds and sugar, and eaten hot. Mohnnudeln use poppy seed, a traditional Austrian ingredient that turns up in strudels and cakes as well.

They work as an unusual dessert or a light dinner, and don’t be surprised if you see locals ordering them as a main course.

12. Tafelspitz

Tafelspitz is beef, not veal: a cut from the top of the rump, simmered slowly in broth with root vegetables and served with the broth as a first course. Tafelspitz then comes to the table with the sliced beef, roast potatoes, apple and horseradish, and a chive sauce.

It was the favorite dish of Emperor Franz Joseph I, which is a large part of why it became the Viennese restaurant classic it still is. If a menu or an older guide calls it boiled veal, that is a mistranslation.

13. Wiener Schnitzel

Wiener Schnitzel is a thin veal cutlet, pounded flat, breaded and fried in butter or lard until the coating puffs away from the meat. Wiener Schnitzel is protected under Austrian law: to carry the name it must be veal, and the pork version has to be sold as Schnitzel Wiener Art or Wiener Schnitzel vom Schwein.

The check matters at the till, since pork is cheaper. It arrives with a wedge of lemon and either potato salad or parsley potatoes, and a good one is bigger than the plate.

14. Apfelstrudel

Apfelstrudel is apple, sugar, cinnamon, raisins and breadcrumbs rolled in a hand-stretched dough pulled so thin you can read a newspaper through it. Apfelstrudel is Viennese by reputation, and the oldest known strudel recipe, for a Millirahmstrudel, is a handwritten one from 1696 kept at the Vienna City Library.

Order it warm with vanilla sauce or whipped cream. The test of a good one is the pastry rather than the filling: it should shatter, not bend.

15. Sachertorte

Sachertorte is a dense chocolate cake with a layer of apricot jam under a dark chocolate glaze, served with unsweetened whipped cream to cut the sweetness. Sachertorte was, by tradition, created in 1832 by Franz Sacher, then a 16-year-old apprentice in the court kitchen of Prince Metternich in Vienna.

Two Viennese houses spent much of the 20th century in court over who could call their cake the original: the Hotel Sacher and the pastry shop Demel. Both still sell it, both are worth a stop, and the version you prefer usually comes down to how much apricot you like.

As you can see, the mountains and the small towns are not the only reason to go. Cooks at home and in restaurants lean on fresh, local ingredients, so every dish tells you something about the region it comes from. Make a list of the ones that caught your eye, and if you are still working out where to base yourself, compare places to stay in Austria in the region whose food you want to eat, because Tyrol, Vorarlberg and Vienna do not cook the same way.

That’s it, I’m hungry now. I’ll let you ponder over these dishes while I go grab a bite.

Don’t forget travel insurance

Travel insurance covers you if part of your trip gets canceled, if you get sick or hurt abroad, and sometimes even if your electronics break or get stolen. Plan for the best, prepare for the worst. I make sure I’m covered on every trip I go on.

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I was invited on the #inAustria trip by iambassador in partnership with the Austrian National Tourist Office. As always, anything I write about this trip is my opinion only.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the first seven dishes on this page are ones she ate on a winter trip through Tyrol. The team covers Austria for independent travelers, including the food, the hotels and the winter activities worth booking, and updates this page when names, regions and recipes need correcting.