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Of Sausages
Augustin in Vienna - Eat well, lounge well
While I am very much into cooking my own food, going out and enjoying what others have cooked up for my consumption is something I'm very fond of as well. Of course, it does cost the equivalent of money, so if you don't have any, home cooking might be a better solution for you.
If you do indeed have scraped together enough dough to be able to buy yourself some food and drink, here's a place you should visit: Augustin. Set in a rather shabby part in a rather shabby district of Vienna (well, it's true. It just isn't really pretty, that district), Augustin is a great surprise. Not only does its exterior work hard on betraying the splendid interiour, the food is also quite delicious and plentiful.
Decked out in Biedermeier sofas, chandeliers, sturdy wooden tables and loads of candles, Augustin is as cozy as it can get. The fact that almost every night there's a chap playing the piano, only adds to the undeniable charm of the place. Foodwise I opted for nothing less than a Bauernkotelett (farmer's cutlet), which consisted of tender grilled pork, covered in loads of roasted onions, with fried potatoes, little cubes of bacon and pole beans on the side:
The only problem with the cozy interior of Augustin is, that sitting on a sofa as soft as the one we sat on, means, that your food sits somewhere on eye level, which makes it a tad difficult to eat (having been confronted with that dire situation myself, here's a trick that actually works: simply sit on a chair for the duration of the meal!). Here's just a small thing I'd like for the owners to do. Update your website! While I think your Bauernkotelett was worth every single cent I paid for it, advertising your food roughly three Euros cheaper than it actually is, may be frowned upon by people less lenient than me! Anyway, I absolutely recommend going to Augustin, especially round eight, when the pianist will be playing one of his tunes, while you, stuffed with most exquisite Austrian foods, can recline on a sofa with cigarette in mouth and beer in hand. Augustin is located in the 15th district, Märzstraße 67, a three minute walk from the U3 station Johnstraße:View Larger Map
DBMA: Feeding Tourists - Part III
And because I somewhat promised the last part, here's a picture of the best food we had during our stay on the island of Texel:
It's from a restaurant in De Koog, which name I didn't jot down, and even the mighty Google seems to have the restaurant positioned somewhere else than I remember it to be. Let's just say, it's the only Thai restaurant in De Koog and it's not in the grizzly Dorpsstraat. You'll find it. We were a bit worried because there were barely any people there, and wondered whether it's the fate of the restaurants that serve the most distinguished food on the island to perish due to their exotic nature. When we walked past the next day, an hour earlier than we'd been there the day before, we were happy to see that our fears were unfounded. The restaurant was packed. And with this rather happy ending I will conclude my Death By Martini Abroad specials. I hope you had a blast, I know I did. Dank u wel!
Absolutely related:
DBMA: Feeding Tourists - Part II
It took a mere ten days, but here I am with yet another glorious update, namely Pt.II of my already epic feature on how to feed tourists. Where tourists are actually my girlfriend and I.
As you may remember from last time, there's not a whole lot that speaks for the cuisine of the Netherlands. Which, by the way, is not meant to be mean in any way. It's just the way it is. But they do make some mean fries.
And they've got these fantastic contraptions that hold your fries. Which makes for a great fries-eating-experience. 
Hell, who needs a refined cuisine, when you've got stuff like that? Apart from fries, Dutch cuisine also offers pancakes. I don't really care for pancakes, so I let my girlfriend sample an apple-pancake in the restaurant next to the lighthouse in the north of the isle of Texel (called "De Toren", which I think means "The Lighthouse", but it could mean all other kinds of things as well; I'm simply too lazy to find out). Anyway, I was told that the pancake was ok, but nothing to write home about. Which, when on vacation, is a bad thing, because it takes away yet another thing to write on all those postcards. (Disclaimer: I didn't send any postcards. So it wasn't just you who didn't get one, it was everyone!) Anyway, I think the picture of the pancake turned out quite nice though:
Come back soon to witness yet another entry on what we had while on vacation, or maybe I'll skip the last part in favour of telling you what I had last week. I'm just a dare-devil like that, you know?
DBMA: Feeding Tourists - Part I
When on vacation, people do two things: nothing and eating.
I had actually planned on writing a lengthy essay on the merits and the downsides of being at a place that specializes in feeding these hungry hoards, but after a few paragraphs I came to the conclusion that it would be far too rambling. So instead, here's a rundown of a few places we ate during our stay in the Netherlands:First of all there was Wagamama in Amsterdam. It's actually a Japanese chain, but I'd never been to one, so we sat and ate:
This is Yaki Udon, which contained all sorts of vegetables, chicken and prawns. I'd never before realized that Udon noodles taste a bit like potatoes. We also had a starter, which the good people at Wagama like to call a side dish:
Grilled asparagus. I must say, it sounded better on the menu. I guess I'm just not much of an asparagus man.On Texel, where tourist feeding places are abundant, we had our first dinner at a tex-mex-pizzaplace-asian mixture of a restaurant, aptly named Maxima Classic Grill Restaurant Argentina. The logical conclusion was for me to have an entrecôte: 
It wasn't the best steak I'd ever had, but hey, it was my vacation and it was meat, so I was happy. That's it for today. Come back tomorrow for more detailed stories on what to eat where and why on the isle of Texel.
Wagamama Restaurant Maxima Classic Grill Restaurant Argentina
DBMA (Death by Martini Abroad): At Douwe Egberts Koffie Cafe
Now, before I start venturing into the culinary delights of the Netherlands, and after having written about how good they are at importing stuff, I'm going to post a little disclaimer here. First off, the Netherlands are not a place with a rich unique cuisine. To be precise, there seem to be two things they like to attribute to their cuisine, and that's pancakes and fries. Everything else seems to be imported. So don't expect me writing about this or that Dutch specialty, because, well, there really aren't any.
With that out of the way, here's another thing I might add. They don't do coffee too well. The only read good coffee we had was at the Douwe Egbert's Cafe in Amsterdam.View Larger Map And yes, the Google Street View image shows a construction site, but trust me, it is there.They made a pretty good Café Latte and the first day we were there, I had a chocolate muffin for breakfast:
My girlfriend opted for an apple pie, which I was told wasn't half bad either.
Since we only spent two nights in Amsterdam and the café was so close to our Hotel, we went there not just once, but twice. The next day my stomach needed something a bit more hearty, so I had a grilled ham and cheese sandwich: 
With the cheese molten to perfection, I was what you may call a happy camper, only that I didn't really camp, but, well, stayed at a hotel. I do feel a bit bad for not venturing much further into town on the lookout for a less chainesque café, but on the other hand, it was my vacation, so give it a rest already.Come back tomorrow for a sad but entertaining look at the one-size-fits-all cuisine of tourist locations.
Death by Martini abroad
I will be spending a few days in the wondrous country of The Netherlands. I will not be able to write up new awe-inspiring articles during that time as I will be busy sampling the foods and drinks the People of Tulips and Gouda have to offer.
Until my glorious return, I'll leave you with an image to ponder over. Ta-ta!
Poached eggs - the horror continues. Or does it?
Even despite the horrors of stringy poached eggs haunting me in my dreams, I decided to give it another shot. After finding this recipe on FoodBuzz, where the difficulty of the poaching of the egg wasn't even mentioned in a single sentence, I knew that only confronting my fear would help me overcome it.
Afraid to hop right in, I first spent some time making some sort of croutons, which actually were just fried toast, but what do I know?
I chopped three roman lettuce hearts and a couple of cherry tomatoes and mixed a dressing with some apple-balsamic vinegar, some olive oil and a minced onion.
By then the water for the eggs had already boiled and was now perfect for poaching. I added some vinegar and slid in two eggs. Egg number one immediately lashed out, strands of egg white dancing around the simmering water. Defeat seemed inevitable. Egg number two was even worse. I had to use a spoon to keep it from clouding the whole pot with it's treacherous egg white. Egg number three was the one I expected most from. You see, I had used advice I'd read about here, wrapping the whole egg into clinch-foil and lowering it into the water:
Reminiscent of a scene from a Japanese horror-movie, the eggs floated in there, obviously mocking me and my delusions of ever being able to nicely poach an egg. After a couple of minutes I lifted the two free-floating eggs from their wet grave and put them on some toilet paper. (Yes, you read that right, toilet paper. I was out of paper towels. I could have of course just written "paper towels" and saved myself the embarrassment, but what fun would that be for you?)
Anyway, the two eggs came out surprisingly beautiful. One of them broke open allowing the yolk to spill all over said toilet paper, but the other one, I must say, looked like any other ordinary poached egg.
But here's what's killing me: my secret weapon, the clinch-foil poached egg, became victim to faulty clinch-foil, resulting in water penetrating the makeshift-bag.
Needless to say, I had to throw it away.
Here's more pictures of the final result. Enjoy.
Rice pudding for breakfast
While I'm usually not the type for sweet breakfasts, I couldn't resist when my girlfriend proposed having rice pudding for breakfast today. Mainly because it meant I wouldn't have to battle two strandy poached eggs which still don't do as I say after pouring them - ever so gently - into simmering water. But more about that some other time.
The pudding was made with some sort of all-natural risotto-rice, so it took a bit more milk and longer than planned. Black- and raspberries added some freshness to it, while the pecans added something I can only describe as a wooden taste. To top it off, my girlfriend mixed a cinnamon-sugar concoction which we sprinkled generously over the whole thing.
All in all it was a nice change from yet another watery, less-than-perfect Saturday morning poached egg. So much for my expertise as a cook.
Oh, and by the way, if you're allergic to walnuts, like I am, don't worry about the pecans. Even though they look like the slender cousin of the walnut, they seem not to contain the same substance that makes tongues all over the world go bumpy.
And Hello World!
Well, what else than a Martini to lead the way into this new venture of mine? The place here is called "Death by Martini" after all.
So what is this? Basically, it's yet another blog that focuses on the good life. Which in my case means plenty of very dry Martinis, copious amounts of food and, well, whatever other debauchery might come my way.
As my headquarters are in the fair city of Vienna, reviews of restaurants or other places of interest will be, well, Vienna-focused. If possible, I will also be crossposting reviews and photos of my culinary exploits to Tupalo, my favourite service for this kind of thing.
I've decided to use Posterous to power this very thing here, mainly because it's such a dead-simple service, creating new content will be a hoot!
So keep coming back often, or if you're more into reading my witty prose in a newsreader, do subscribe to my feed.
