Restaurant/food guides for southern Austria

[Soapy Joe]

I have a month long holiday in southern Austria, about 45 minutes from Graz. It is also quite close to the Slovenian border.

I was wondering whether anyone knew of a guide similar to the Slow Food Guide in Italy which would help me find the best restaurants and/or markets and producers within this region. I would assume it will be in German, which is not a problem as my wife speaks German and I am taking lessons and it would be excellent practice!

If no such thing exists, does anyone have any good ideas about how I should go about gathering this information. Obviously I have done Austrian searches on here, Chowhound etc but it seems like there is something of a shortage of gastronomic tourists to this part of the world. Apart from pumpkin seed oil hunters, of course.

[legourmet]

I have a month long holiday in southern Austria, about 45 minutes from Graz. It is also quite close to the Slovenian border.

I was wondering whether anyone knew of a guide similar to the Slow Food Guide in Italy which would help me find the best restaurants and/or markets and producers within this region. I would assume it will be in German, which is not a problem as my wife speaks German and I am taking lessons and it would be excellent practice!

If no such thing exists, does anyone have any good ideas about how I should go about gathering this information. Obviously I have done Austrian searches on here, Chowhound etc but it seems like there is something of a shortage of gastronomic tourists to this part of the world. Apart from pumpkin seed oil hunters, of course.

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Check out this site. May be there is something of interest. I'm not very familiar about slow food in Austria, but it seems that it practically don't excist.

Edited July 24, 2006 by legourmet (log)

[markemorse]

Well, I don't have any serious gourmand tips, but I just spent 4 days in Nickelsdorf (on the Hungarian border close to Slovakia) for a jazz festival and ate every meal at the jazzgalerie nickelsdorf, which is also known as Restaurant Falb.

Definitely not worth going out of your way for, it's basically an old truck stop disguised as a California wine country biergarten (or maybe all Austrian truck stops look like this) but if you're in the area around lunch or dinner time, you could do much much worse. Really drinkable reds from Weingut Lunzer in Gols (the Heidebodem especially). Their German dishes briefly glance across the Hungarian border, great Wiener Schnitzel served with a crisp white salad with caraway that I'd love the recipe for.

Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf/Restaurant Falb

I'd also call for opening hours and to make sure they're not on vacation. They definitely needed one by the time we left....

Like I said, not destination dining, it's basically a bar with grub, but I really enjoyed the food, wine, and vibe. I also saw it under abnormal conditions: they'd brought in a lot of people to help, so I must admit I don't have any idea what it's normally like there.

Anyway, I thought something is better than nothing. Too bad there won't be any jazz happening (I don't think) when you're there: that would make it destination dining.

Good luck!

mark

Edited July 25, 2006 by markemorse (log)

[Soapy Joe]

Thanks for that...I had already found that site and it made me a little concerned about the lack of interesting markets/restaurants etc in the region...or the lack of any slow food movement.