Edi Frauneder and Tina Preschitz (with dogs) belong to creative clique the Schnitzel Mafia, whose unofficial hangout is Frauneder’s restaurant, Edi and the Wolf. (Lizzy Sullivan)
On an early fall night, smatterings of German emanate from multiple dinner conversations zigzagging across a long communal table at Edi and the Wolf in Alphabet City. Plates of landjäger (dried sausage), spätzle and flatbread are passed among the eager dinner guests, a collection of Austrian expats and their various multinational partners and friends. “Look at this place. It’s packed,” says Elizabeth Kollman, a 32-year-old life coach visiting from Vienna. “Obviously people are more interested in Austrian cuisine.”
Twelve years ago, when Kurt Gutenbrunner opened his white-tablecloth Austrian spot Wallsé in the West Village, New Yorkers barely knew the difference between spätzle and schnitzel. Now, Gutenbrunner has an expanding mini Austrian empire of five restaurants, and a new generation of Austrian restaurateurs are storming the city with modern takes on Alpine fare.
Edi and the Wolf’s co-owner Edi Frauneder is leading the charge. The 35-year-old Vienna native has put a fresh face on the city’s once staid view of Austrian food culture, attracting chic young regulars who hail from his homeland. “Kurt [Gutenbrunner] is 20 years older; it’s a different style,” says Frauneder. “We’re a bit more playful.”
The past two years have seen the opening of no less than four new Austrian restaurants: Edi and the Wolf; Der Kommissar in Park Slope; Gutenbrunner’s latest, Cafe Kristall, in SoHo; and Schnitzel & Things in Midtown East — plus the just-completed expansion of Cafe Katja on the Lower East Side. There are currently at least a dozen Austrian eateries in the city, up from five a decade ago — and there are more on the way.
Despite recent hurricane flooding, Frauneder and his business partner Wolfgang Ban are still set to open the Third Man, an art-nouveau cocktail bar half a block up from Edi and the Wolf, inspired by Vienna’s venerable Loos bar, on Nov. 28. “It’s more elegant than Edi and the Wolf, but it’s very cozy, and you can share good drinks and good times with friends,” says Frauneder, who grew up in the restaurant business. He moved to New York in 2001, initially to run the delegates dining room for the German Mission to the United Nations, but after eight years, he got the entrepreneurial itch to have his own place. He and Ban opened their first Austrian spot, Seäsonal Restaurant and Weinbar in Midtown, in 2008. Edi and the Wolf followed two years later, at the end of 2010.
“Edi is the whole connection,” says Philipp Haemmerle, an Austrian expat and renowned fashion set designer who helped create the restaurant’s rustic-farmhouse-meets-pirate-ship decor. “He knows everyone and everyone tries to know him.”
Haemmerle is part of a clique of regulars at the restaurant who all hail from Austria and have a growing presence in the city’s creative circles. They cheekily call themselves the “Schnitzel Mafia.”
“It spread so fast, and now everybody calls us that,” says Tina Preschitz, 38, a Schnitzel Mafia member and native Austrian. She moved to New York in 2004 and now runs her own fashion and TV production company, where she works with plenty of Austrians, including Haemmerle.
Another successful young Austrian chef and restaurateur, Erwin Schrottner, 38, is a more direct protégé of Gutenbrunner’s. He moved to New York from Austria in 2000, and began working at Monkey Bar and, during his time off, at Wallsé.
Five years ago, he and his partner, chef Andrew Chase, opened Cafe Katja on Orchard Street in a space so small, it was equipped with only two electric burners. He underestimated the demand.
The restaurant closed for renovations for 2 ½ months this summer. It reopened last month with a kitchen twice the original size, and an expanded menu — the better to feed all those hungry expats. “We constantly have more Austrians coming,” he says.
Austrian food is even on the rise for eaters-on-the-go. In 2009, Oleg Voss, a Ukraine native and French Culinary Insitute grad who had spent some time in Vienna, opened a food truck called Schnitzel & Things with menu items like veal schnitzel and a schnitz-burger. Such offerings earned it the 2009 “Rookie of the Year” Vendy food-truck award. In 2011, a brick-and-mortar location opened to meet the growing demand for fast schnitzel.
And, of course, oenophiles’ burgeoning love affair with Austrian varietals continues to grow as well. “I’ve been buying wine in New York on and off for 12 years, and in the past five years, I’ve seen a huge escalation of people importing Austrian wine,” says restaurateur Alicia Nosenzo.
Next month, she and partner Harold Dieterle are set to open a highly anticipated Italian-German restaurant called the Marrow in the West Village. Its much ballyhooed 300-bottle wine list will be heavy with Austrian vintages. “There’s always the next new thing in wine, and grüner veltliner [a primary Austrian varietal] became that thing,” she says. “I think it’s here to stay.”