Oberlaa

After long resisting Vienna's Oberlaa chain (how could they be good if they have so many branches?) I succumbed. You see I had coffee with the founder yesterday and he is/was by all accounts altogether brilliant when comes to pastry.

The Neumarkt branch spills out into the square, packed with a mixture of locals and a smattering of foreigners on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Oberlaa is probably the least traditional of the best known Viennese Konditerei. True to their reputation, the table menu features the "neu, new, nuovo, Mango-Schokolade Torte:" think layers of flourless almond cake (with a little praline perhaps?), Pariser Creme (chocolate mousse) and mango puree. And, oh yes, a thin layer of whipped cream. It's light and fruity, a nice balance of creamy chocolate and bright, tropical intensity.

There's a bit of Paris there in the mango—maybe even a little Guadelope—but it works. Perhaps because the chocolate isn't too strident.

Their chocolates are good too if a little sweet for my taste. A little like a Whitman sampler but one that actually tastes good.

Sluka

Sluka, another of Vienna’s famed Zuckerbäckers is holding up less well under the Christmas onslaught. Admittedly, its location next to the Rathaus puts it just a few steps away from the ginormous Christmas market that takes over the square in front of City Hall. The market is great fun in a hokey, carnival kind of way. Seemingly, there are miles of stands selling kitsch and wurst. And Sluka does not bear the overflow with grace. The service is more brusque than efficient, the harried waitress demanding payment even as she drops my order on the table. Looking over the shop-worn desserts I had selected the strudel, thinking it a safe bet. Not so, it turned out to be soggy, mushy and overly sweet. No need to go to Vienna for this!

Demel

Two weeks before Christmas, Demel is a madhouse. At five in the afternoon, the waitresses cut through the swaying shoals of tourists like sharks on a mission. The customers barely take heed though, transfixed as they are by so much towering confectionery. Demel’s is easily the city’s most picturesque Café-Konditerei with fittings that date back to the late 1800s. Admittedly, the design is just about as chaotic as the crowd with a confusion of styles that comes with a century of decorative accretions. The latest change came in 2002 when DO & CO the catering corporation that bought the storied confectioner added an open kitchen to the mix. Here, the curious can ogle the Sacher-Tortes being iced and chocolates receiving their final flourishes. I am of two minds about this. I love seeing the meticulous workers carrying out their métier, but it does turn the café into an even more Disneyesque production that it already is.

All the same, the cakes look damn good—not merely the tortes but also the strudels, tarts, and other more homey confections. I stick to the cakes though, ordering a slice of Maroni-Torte, a four layer affair of chocolate and chestnut cream robed in an infinitesimally thin coating of marzipan and an overcoat of chocolate glaze. Textbook perfect and the little “kiss” of chocolate dipped chestnut cream on top just adds to the delight. Demel’s at least seems to be surviving the corporate takeover rather well.

Gerstner

Though Gerstner dates back to 1843, the Café-Konditerei on Kärtner Strasse, one of Central Vienna’s main shopping drags, is of much more recent vintage. No Gemütlichkeit here, rather a contemporary urban vibe keeps the room humming with conversation, the steam-engine hiss of the large, utilitarian espresso machine and the constant timpani clink of china on marble counters. The cakes are picture perfect though my Dobostorte —admittedly a dense confection of chocolate buttercream and some eight layers of vanilla cake—is perhaps a little denser than need be. And the coffee is thin.

And I’m a little put-off by the display of French-style macarons in the window. It makes me wonder if the management’s heart is really in the right place. I’m probably being unfair though, who am I to deny the Viennese these delightful Parisian treats.

Heiner Café-Konditerei

A short walk from St. Stephen’s cathedral, L. Heiner is on Wollzeile 9, more or less cattycorner, from Hans Diglas’ café. Heiner has more Gemütlichkeit than class, the waitresses, outfitted with folkloric costume and orthopedic shoes, bustle with a slightly frenetic efficiency handing out fractions of cakes and sections of tarts. The Sarah Bernhardt Torte (€3.50) I order is a happy surfeit of cream upon cream; three layers of chocolate buttercream and two of mocha sandwiched by thin layers of walnut cake. All this is covered with a chocolate glaze. Yes, it’s a little over the top but what would you expect from a cake named after the famed actress.

Café Diglas

I met with Hans Diglas at his family’s café at the height of Jause, the Viennese ritual of coffee with a little something on the side. The tables were filled with scowling, grey-haired men cemented into corners, protected from the world by their daily paper; young Frauleins in jeans inhaling cigarettes and exhaling gossip; tourists with lust-glazed gazes eyeing the Apfelstrudel and jam-filled Krapfen (doughnuts). Diglas is one of the few cafés that make their own desserts. Made fresh everyday, Herr Diglas boasts—as opposed to so many of the city’s Konditerei (pastry shops), he tells me, that freeze their cakes and defrost according to need. He declines to name names. Hans Diglas is hospitable to a fault, signaling to the waiter to bring over four desserts, “just to taste,” he assures me. Nevertheless he is quick to disabuse me of any illusions I may have about Viennese cafés and dessert. Not only did cafés here not serve desserts until very recently, he assures me, they were prohibited by law to do so. Though not every dessert was outlawed. For example the Nusskipferln (nut-filled horn) he insists I try was allowed. But forget the tortes for which Austrian metropolis is renowned. Those came later, at least to the kind of café Herr Diglas owns.

There is another sort of café, the so-called Café-Konditerei where desserts are the star attraction. These are the ones where ladies of a certain age traditionally linger throughout the afternoon nibbling on the endless permutations of butter, sugar and flour that the Austrians refer to as Mehlspeisen, (literally flour foods). The long history of the more typical café is of a place where men have congregated and consumed drug beverages, not merely the stimulating varieties but also wine, punch and other spirits. But sweets? Well European men are traditionally not supposed to have a sweet tooth. In Vienna the Café-Konditerei owners were so concerned that they were losing out on the male traffic that they petitioned the authorities to allow them to serve savory foods so that the coarser sex might have something to eat if they accompanied their lady friends to the confectioner’s shop.


Originally those confectioners set up shop to cater to the upwardly mobile bourgeoisie who couldn’t afford their own Zuckerbäcker as these artisans are know in Austria. When a lady wanted to host an afternoon tea, she would contract one of these shops to supply the necessary sweets. The fashion for a sweet afternoon Jause seems to have arrived with a fashion for all things French around the turn of the nineteenth century. Eventually, the sweet shop would add a few tables and respectable ladies had a place to chat and nibble on Torten while their husbands cut deals in a smoke-filled Kaffehaus.

But back to those Torten. Don’t image for a moment that there is some antique origin to those delightful strata of sugar and fat. Even that delectable lodestar of Viennese confectionary, the buttercream, dates to the end of the nineteenth century. Jószef Dobos is credited with inventing it in the 1880s. It’s worth remembering that it is virtually impossible to produce buttercream on a commercial basis unless you have dependable refrigeration. So we can thank the industrial revolution not only for flush toilets and espresso but buttercream as well.

At Nakur

Kolkata sweet makers have a weird life, like bakers the world over, they sleep while the rest of us work and make themselves busy into the deep hours of the night. When you visit the sweetshops in the afternoon—at least those where the workshops are in the rear of the store—you see the workers sprawled on benches and any other elevated spot, tossing and turning in an effort sleep. As best as I can figure out, many of them live here much of the time. If you want to see the action, you need to wait until dark. Most of the confectioners don’t start production until six, seven o’clock so the sweets are fresh the next morning. Remember, there are no refrigerators here.

The best example of one of these small confectioners is Girish Chandra Dey & Nakur Chandra Nandy, one of the best loved and oldest sweetshops in North Kolkata. Nakur, as everyone calls it, is on a busy commercial lane in the skein of densely trafficked streets that make up the old Shyambazar district. The shop itself is little more than a grated hole in the wall but the locals who line up at the window and the connoisseurs who have braved the traffic across town, know that this is where you can find some of the finest sandesh in Kolkata, delicate and creamy with a subtle grain that melts gradually and unevenly in your mouth.

This is probably the spot to discuss Kolkatans’ most beloved sweetmeat. Whereas rossogolla seems to incite controversy and reactions that I associate with soccer hooligans [see http://www.shantanughosh.com/2007/06/rshogolla-from-orissa.html for a little sample] sandesh seems to be primarily on object of affection. There is controversy, no doubt, but little bloodlust. I had the good fortune to have Joydeep Chatterjee my Kolkata sweets guru open the door for me at Nakur. Here there is no secret (or not much) to how sandesh is made. In fact, regular mortals can see right into the workshop as they shop for their sandesh. The workroom is astonishing simple. A large gas burner or two with a giant karai (Indian wok) set on top. A couple of sinks. And that’s about it. The workers mostly work squatting on the floor assembling the confections.

The process of making sandesh is easy enough to describe—the finesse comes in the execution. And the ingredients. In the early hours of evening, milk trucks pull up to the front of the shop, buckets of fresh, raw cow’s milk are carried inside and then pasteurized. Then a worker adds a small amount of the sour whey from the last batch of chhana. This curdles the hot milk. Then the milk solids, called chhana, are scooped out and allowed to drain. This is, incidentally, exactly the same process as making ricotta. Now the milk curds are set on a wooden board, set at an angle over a sink, allowing the whey to seep out gradually. Then comes a light squeeze in a linen cloth and finally the critical step where the chhana is kneaded, by hand, to achieve just the right texture. I am introduced to the master kneader, Uchit Narayan, the one Joydeep told me he would adorn with jewels and honors, if he had the power. Uchit grins at me and gets back to work.

Once the curds are the perfect consistency, they are cooked with a sugar syrup. Depending on the desired result, you will cook them more or less time. Cook the mixture briefly and the sandesh is the consistency of a light delicate cheesecake. Longer contact with the fire and the sandesh is drier so it can be molded and filled—much like Belgian chocolates. At Nakur the fillings vary from lemon to black currant to even vodka!

So what makes Nakur better than the great majority of Kolkata sweetshops? First the milk. Protap Chandra Nag, who runs the shop, quips that K.C. Das uses pasteurized milk for their confections and so his sandesh has no flavor. Another reason is the slow process of draining the chhana which maintains the fat content of the milk. Joydeep tells me that a lot of sweetshops weigh down the [warm] chhana to extract the whey, losing a lot of butterfat along the way. They can render the fat and sell it for ghee but the sandesh is poorer for it. Finally, the apostates will the knead the chhana in a machine. A horror, my guru assures me.

So what is my favorite here? I think it is one of the simplest: a sandesh filled with a mix of soft chhana and evaporated milk. It’s like an edible haiku on the many forms of creaminess.