19 of the Hottest Breakfast and Brunch Places in Vienna (2024)

Vienna

By Tas TóbiásLast updated: May. 8, 2024

There's nothing extraordinary about Vienna's top breakfast restaurants, but they deliver what we're after with such establishments: a well-made omelet, a tasty shakshuka, an Instagram-friendly avocado-salmon bowl. Most of these places serve breakfast food until well into the afternoon and alcohol, too, in case you were wondering.

#1 Sneak In

Sneak in is a popular breakfast restaurant in the heart of Vienna’s fashionable District 7. There's nothing typically Viennese about this sleek space complete with modern furnishings, stylish servers, and dishes like vegan scrambled “eggs,” avocado-salmon bowl, shakshuka, and huevos rancheros, but who said your Vienna trip must be limited to old-school coffeehouses manned by grumpy waiters wearing tuxedos?

The food is very tasty, the service kind, and the enormous windows ideal to glimpse the bougie neighborhood known as hipsterville. Mains are €12-17 and advance booking is an absolute must.

#2 Hildebrandt Cafe

Trendy Millennial residents from Vienna’s elegant District 8 (Josefstadt) fill the small tables of Hildebrandt, a popular breakfast restaurant in this sleepy but prosperous part of town. Amid Vienna's Middle Eastern food-dominated breakfast landscape, here you can also enjoy a satisfying plate of ham and eggs, granola bowl, and waffles.

The location is the run-down Palace Schönborn, a summer house of Friedrich Karl von Schönborn, the Vice-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire. The architect was the Baroque superstar, Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt, hence the establishment's moniker (the restaurant shares the ground floor with the quirky Austrian Folk Museum). Forget about a table without advance booking. Breakfast served until 3 p.m.

#3 Propeller

One of the most popular breakfast restaurants of Vienna is located along the lively Margaretenstraße in District 5. Propeller delivers a predictable but flawless experience: courteous waiters, on-trend breakfast dishes, inviting interior. Locals and tourists both come here, most of them stylish female Millennials. Be sure to book ahead, and try asking for a table by the oversized windows. Breakfast served until 3 p.m.

#4 Café Schopenhauer

If an old-school and a modern Viennese coffeehouse had an offspring, it would look like Café Schopenhauer. High ceilings, oversized windows, marble-topped tables, creaking floors, yes, but also a sleek concrete counter, open kitchen, and fashionably dressed servers. The menu, too, reflects this fusion of old and new: avocado toast and soy milk matcha appear next to eggs in glass, frankfurters, and buttered kaiser roll.

The crowd leans fashionable Millennials and upper-middle-class folks from nearby Währing (District 18). As a hat-tip to the intellectual ethos of the Vienna coffeehouse culture, there's an entire corner laid out with books for sale. The dishes are named after famous philosophers. "Simone de Beauvoir" – espresso with a cigarette. Why Schopenhauer? The reason is disappointingly prosaic: the cafe is located by Schopenhauer Street.

#5 Café Prückel

A coffeehouse establishment, Cafe Prückel features a vast interior fitted with floor-to-ceiling windows and giant mirror panels that overlook the Ringstraße. Being in the well-off city center means that customers are upscale and elegant, but tourists also venture here, as do stylish students from the University of Applied Arts across the street (also with an excellent museum, the MAK).

Prückel owes its inviting midcentury interior to a 1955 refurbishment by architect Oswald Haerdtl (the back section has regained its original Art Nouveau details, but the front is where the action is). The food is solid and includes both breakfast dishes and savory Austrian classics. The newspaper selections, laid out on a stick in typical Viennese fashion, range from local dailies to the New York Times. A true-to-Vienna cafe experience.

#6 Espresso Burggasse

Part cafe, part breakfast restaurant, part bar, Espresso is an effortlessly cool establishment in Vienna's fashionable District 7. Although it opened in 2004, Espresso will take you back in time to the 1960s: neon sign, red leather banquettes, small plastic-topped tables, midcentury chairs (the ceiling shows leftover frescoes from the bakery once here).

The breakfast dishes and the lunch specials are reliably solid, the coffee distinctly old school. Evenings also get lively, when the place transforms into a natural wine-forward bar. Both the servers and the crowd are trend-conscious, but not in a pretentious way. Closed on Sunday.

#7 Meinklang Hofladen

Meinklang is known as a pioneer of natural wines, but the Burgenland-basedfamily winery is more of an integrated agricultural farm: they raise cattle (Angus), pigs (Mangalica), chicken, and grow their own crops on hundreds of hectares of land near the Austria-Hungary border. To bring their bounty of nature closer to well-off, urban consumers, in 2022 the Michlitsfamily opened a polished specialty store and restauranton Vienna's chic Margaretenstraße in District 5.

Here, nearly everything comes from Meinklang's Demeter-certified biodynamic farm: wines, sausages, eggs, meats, fresh and pickled veggies. There'salso a bakery on the premises serving sourdough breads and morning pastries made from wheat, rye, oat, millet, and barley.

#8 Figar

A buzzing breakfast and brunch restaurant in Vienna, Figar draws a female-heavy Millennial crowd with internationally inspired and tasty breakfast hits: eggs Benedict on a bed of sourdough; avocado toast; English breakfast, granola bowls. In the afternoons, after 3 p.m., updated burgers and salads take over the slim menu. The location is the fashionable District 7, the inside an industrial-chic hall with a full-service bar. Advance booking is recommended.

#9 Drechsler

Chic locals and tourists fill the small marble-topped tables under the barrel vaulted ceiling of Drechsler, one of Vienna’s hottest breakfast restaurants. The dishes, served all day, are nearly limitless and not of the Austrian kind: pancake, French toast, granola, avocado toast alongside fruit juices, beers, sparkling wines, and co*cktails. The food is a bit inconsistent, but the vibes reliably cool. Advance booking is highly recommended. Vienna's popular produce market, Naschmarkt, is right across the street (as is the city's legendary gay bar, Cafe Savoy).

#10 Ströck Feierabend (Burggasse)

Ströck is a city-wide chain of bakeries, most of them the reliable workhorse type, but I’m here to highlight their Burggasse shop whose croissants have no equal in Vienna. Freshly made throughout the day, tender and flaky, but also rich and elastic and enclosed in a shiny glaze. Other treats, too, exist – wonderful rolls, Stangerln (bread sticks), breakfast pastries – and a spacious and comfortable dining area where egg-based breakfasts are served. All this inside Vienna’s most fashionable neighborhood in District 7.

#11 Wirr

Wirr is a laid-back breakfast-all-day restaurant lining Burggasse, the beating heart of Vienna’s lively District 7. All sorts of people flock here, for good reason. The vibes are unquestionably cool: chipped walls, eclectic furnishings, ear-catching music, oversized windows, and a stylish and kind staff. The highlight of the breakfast menu is the “Naher Osten,” consisting of thick labneh and two bulbs of poached eggs sitting in a honey and almond-slicked sauce.

#12 Cafe Korb

A busy cafe in Vienna's city center, Korb used to be the hub of underground artists in the 1960s and 1970s when Vienna was hardly known for its embrace of the new and the unconventional. Today, many tourists stumble in here, but the ambiance of the cluttered space has retained some of its irreverence.

A midcentury remodeling left its mark on the interior, which is fitted with linoleum floors and plastic-topped tables (the futuristic but impractical bathroom merits a visit to the below-ground level). The Viennese breakfast dishes and savory classics are solid, but the prices reflect the downtown premium.

#13 Felzl (Lerchenfelder Straße)

Felzl is a popular new-wave bakery chain in Vienna with famously delicious almond croissants. Yes: tender and crispy and filled with a rich paste. The morning pastries and sandwiches are also generously portioned and tasty. My go-to is their Lerchenfelder Straße location, with a spacious interior, soaring ceilings, plenty of seating, and giant windows that overlook this lively street. And overlook, too, the Altlerchenfelder Parish Church, the first Romantic-style building in Vienna and with a wonderful fresco cycle inside.

#14 Öfferl (Wollzeile)

Together with Joseph’s Brot, Öfferl is the most fashionable – and expensive – of Vienna’s new-wave bakeries. With a couple of locations in the city center, it’s also the most easily accessible to visitors. Of their sweet breakfast pastries, I especially like the generously filled vanilla donut (Krapfen), the yeast rolls with plum jam (Powidl-Buchteln), and the cottage-cheese pastry (Topfengolatsche). Also excellent are the bread and roll selections, especially the Salzstangerln – typical Viennese bread sticks coated in coarse salt grains and caraway seeds. Perfect for snacking.

#15 Joseph Brot (Albertinaplatz)

Opened in 2009, Joseph’s Brot was among the avant-garde in Vienna’s new-wave bakery revolution. The company’s success has been so complete that today it operates a nationwide chain, two of which are in Vienna’s city center. Both polished, sleek, and sharp-looking. Let me draw your attention to the kaiser rolls, the almond and chocolate croissants, and the potato sticks (Stangerl).

It's another question whether they’re superior to those served by others on this list – I’m not convinced – and they’re surely pricier. Note that this location, across the Albertina Museum, has a seating area too (try to get there early, before it gets mobbed on the weekends).

#16 Café Frida

Yppenplatz is a gentrifying neighborhood a bit outside Vienna's city center in District 16, where a mainly Turkish community lives together with a growing number of young alternatives. Frida, a buzzing breakfast restaurant, caters to this latter demographic. The dishes lean Mexican, with lots of egg-based breakfast foods and burritos, as well as vegan and vegetarian options (plus wines and craft beers).

Frida is most enjoyable in the warmer months when its outdoor tables overlook the lively square. Once here, you can't and shouldn't miss the lively Brunnenmarkt, a long row of Turkish and Middle Eastern vendors.

#17 Ramasuri

Ramasuri is a lively breakfast restaurant in inner-Leopoldstadt (District 2), a gentrifying part of Vienna across the Danube Canal. The breakfast dishes are extensive, perfectly passable, and a bit pricey. Advance booking is a good idea, especially for the outdoor tables. Two comparably trendy restaurants – Mochi and Ansari – are located just across the square from it.

#18 Neni (Naschmarkt)

Vienna’s historic Naschmarkt today is an enormous Turkish and Middle-Eastern produce market that draws mainly tourists. Over time, some of the vendor stands have transformed into chic restaurants, such as Neni, one of the institutions here (the Neni brand has since expanded to places including Berlin, Paris, and Amsterdam). Opened in 2009 and owned by an Israeli-Austrian family, Neni serves breakfast dishes inspired by the Middle East – shakshuka, “Israeli breakfast” – and there’s of course avocado toast with smoked salmon. Try to book ahead, else you might be exiled to the cramped upstairs tables with no views.

#19 OBEN

In 2003, Vienna’s central library moved along the ring road called Gürtel, into a striking building lifted high above the busy street level. On the top floor of this vast complex sits Oben, a restaurant shaped in a semicircle so that most tables provide a view. The breakfast dishes show various gastronomic inspirations; a good choice is the Plant Power, featuring sides of kimchi, fermented carrots, samosa, chickpeas, a granola bowl, and seasonal fruits and vegetables. The crowd is local, prices somewhat elevated given the panoramic location.