Dining at a Heuriger

I must say this was the most romantic dining venue with great ambiance I've ever been to-date. The name of the place was Twelve Apostlecellar, or Zwolf-Apolftelkeller in Vienna. Zwolf-Apolftelkeller is a heuriger, a wine tavern which serves local wines as well as food.


The heuriger is located at a 3-storey underground vaulted cellar which dated back to as early as 12th century. Entering from the street level entrance, we descended through a rather narrow stairway down to the cellar. The ceiling of the vaulted cellar is high and I think we were probably 5 or 6 meters below ground at the first underground level. Looking at the well-preserved historic masonry, I felt like as if I'd travelled 500 years back to an ancient dungeon!




The cellar is lighted with tungsten lights and suitably dotted with pieces of antic at a number of the corners. The atmosphere was really romantic.

I've read that waiters and waitresses in Vienna are particular grumpy and bad-tempered. Well, we experienced it first-hand at this heuriger. We'd probably waited for 5 or 10 minutes before a middle-aged waiter served us a menu. We were browsing through the menu for a few seconds to determine what to order before the waiter left us rudely and only returned 5 minutes later to take our order. He was so impatient donning his vexed faces.




Fortunately the great ambiance of place overwhelmed the incidence and we were not really offended in any bit. There were also two musicians playing violin and accordion which lifted our spirit immediately when we stepped into the cellar. And they played good classical music! We should have tipped them to show our appreciation.


We ordered a Viennese platter for 2: meat dumplings, greave dumplings, smoked pork, carraway roast, black puddings, liverwurst and Frankfurter with hot cabbage and bacon salad. Yummy! Yummy! I loved the dish but Siew Leng thought it's a bit too salty though, and she disliked the black puddings and liverwurst. I was satisfied having the meal and washed down with a glass of local white wine. ;)


Even the streets around that area were so romantic. I'm already missing Vienna's Zwolf-Apolftelkeller! :)