They’re saying this is the hottest day of the year so far, and I’m sitting on a restaurant terrace. I’m not — in case you were thinking, “Oh Christ, it’s going to be one of those columns” — at some glitzy, breezy place overlooking the azure Med, surrounded by bronzed people wearing linen. No. I’m in downtown Vienna, surrounded by business people who’ve deigned to remove their jackets, and I’m staring at a lump of boiled grey beef and a couple of carrots.
What’s really weird is that it’s taken me most of my culinary life to get here and, though my shirt is glueing to my back and I’m sweating neat stock, I have never been happier to be anywhere than here, right now.
Like a lot of kids, I was a picky eater. They tell me I disliked spice, sourness, fat, fruit and, for quite a long time, yellow, but that I saved particular hatred for soups. Not all of them. I liked oxtail and cream of chicken well enough, but I couldn’t stick vegetable soup. You know, that stuff we got once a week at school, with dehydrated vegetables in a clear liquid. At first, it was the chunks I worried about. I reasoned that there was only one other place I’d seen carrot cubes suspended in warm liquid . . . and that wasn’t conducive to appetite.
In time, though, as my repertoire grew, I realized it was the broth that was the issue. There was a range of textures. Stew I could enjoy. It required a fork. Thick, gravy-like soups allowed me to dip large chunks of bread in them. Thin soup was a scam. I mean, it was just liquid. It was a drink. Clear soup was a deliberate insult to a hungry 10-year-old, and I refused to have any of it.
You might expect that a food-obsessed writer would have had a culinary upbringing that removed such biases, but no. I was stuck with them. When, at 16, a posh girlfriend’s well-meaning mother served me pot-au-feu, I forced myself to eat it and then grabbed a kebab on my way home. The first formal meal I attended, which required me to wear a black tie, also introduced me to consommé. This experience did far more to awaken my class consciousness than Orwell’s Room 101.
But then, someone introduced me to ramen. I can’t recall where exactly. Possibly Wagamama. Yes, that must have been it. When the first noodle canteen opened in London, I was already a food enthusiast and, needless to say, quite pretentious. So, despite my natural resistance, I overcame my gag reflex to try that first trendy bowl of ramen, and I never looked back.
I then embarked on an intense program of experimentation, initially obsessing over my own ramen broths, but eventually boiling chickens for poule-au-pot and simmering bones for phōs. I nearly got kicked out of a seder that took me six months to secure an invite to because my interrogation of my friend’s mother about her chicken soup recipe was apparently excessive. Fine, maybe it was an interrogation and unhinged.
Today, I’m a dedicated broth lover. I’ve tried them all, from tortellini in brodo to beef tea. In fact, I’m probably the only person you know who eagerly anticipates being fed through a tube in their old age. And now we come to Vienna.
It’s difficult to express just how far outside of my comfort zone Plachutta Wollzeile is. It’s a must-visit for every tourist with deep enough pockets, and my God, it’s luxurious. The style is reminiscent of the stateroom on a restrained oligarch’s yacht. The polished wood looks brand new, and the marble floors have been meticulously arranged. Plachutta has more staff than all of London. But they have tafelspitz.
Tafelspitz is a daunting dish. It’s beef boiled in stock with vegetables. There’s even a marrow bone in there. It’s served with various mustards, bread for spreading the bone marrow, and salt for seasoning. Everything is presented in a meticulously polished copper saucepan. They provide you with a cow map and a list of cuts that reads like a Wagner opera:
“Act 4: Kruspelspitz woos Beiried in the magical forest of Lungenbraten. They are surprised by the three Hüferscherzel; Fledermaus, Tafelstück and Zunge, who salute them with a traditional Hüferschwanzel.”
As you can see, I don’t speak a word of German, but the cuts are all beautifully described in English on the menu, providing precise details about fat content, texture, fibrousness, chewiness, and flavor delicacy. After about a week in the simmering stock, they all appear identical on the plate, but the key thing is that nobody is here solely for the meat.
Sure, they eat it. This is a traditional dish from a time when wasting food could result in torture by cardinals. But everything, the vegetables, the potatoes, the meat, are simply by-products. Leftovers from a broth so delicate that it could bring a demigod back from the grave and so potent that it’s worth the money, the journey, and even half a lifetime of wasted opportunities.
I am a fervent lover of wine. I have gained a deep appreciation for the finest wines by sharing pages with Jancis Robinson. But as I sit on the terrace, savoring the elixir of my tafelspitz, I realize that fine wine is somewhat deceptive. It’s merely a clear liquid.
It’s broth that truly reigns supreme.
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