Café Prückel

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P. and I were on holidays in Vienna for 3 days and really wanted to hit up as many cafés as possible. His friend K. suggested a number of places, but when I asked "which café is the granniest" she immediately replied "Café Prückel". I didn't even have to specify what I meant by an "Oma-Café", a granny café. As we entered the vast hall of Café Prückel, I heard a small chorus of angels sing. The place looked as though it hadn't changed for 60 years, it was precisely the kind of café I was looking for. Tall ceilings, seats thickly upholstered in dusty fabric, wooden chairs set up in cozy conversation nooks along tall windows with white curtains. Formica, chrome and so much natural light flooding in that the lamps remained off. Newspapers hanging from wooden rods and cranky old waiters in bowties. The place had that isolated, sedentary aura about it that makes a granny café an oasis from the hustle and bustle of the city. The Lesezirkel selection of magazines was extensive and included Gala! And the seating was ample: in addition to the large room when you first enter, there's terrace seating and a large back room with even more natural light pouring in. As opposed to contemporary Berliner cafés (which will forever remain my basis of comparison, sorry), which are intentionally outfitted to be shabby-chic replicas of an era we're too young to be nostalgic for, Café Prückel is a truly old world café with subtle elegance and faded grandeur. We spent a long hour there relishing the ambiance. And it was a good thing we got our fill on décor alone, since the coffee was the worst I'd had in a long while.