Zum Schwarzen Kameelis 9am too early for your first glass of wine?

According to Anthony Bourdain, absolutely fucking not. And at Zum Schwarzen Kameel they’ve been pouring since 1618, so who am I to tell them they’re wrong.

I went back three times that week. when a place gets it this right, you stop exploring and just keep showing up.

a little history, because this place has more of it than most countries. in 1618 a spice merchant called Johann Baptist Cameel bought the house at Bognergasse 5 and opened a shop, and nobody has ever quite explained how Cameel became Kameel. by the 1800s it was supplying the Habsburg court and pouring wine on the side, Beethoven ate here, and in 1901 they gave the dining room the Jugendstil treatment it still has. half deli, half wine bar, all Vienna.

morning one starts the way Vienna starts: a melange, the city’s own coffee, gentler than a cappuccino and topped with foam. then eggs in a glass, here a martini glass, because why not, with chives and toast for dipping. then French cheeses with figs, before noon, which is either decadent or correct.

the schnitzel is the one to come back for. in Austria you can only call it a Wiener Schnitzel if it’s veal, which tells you how seriously they take it. fried golden, cut into pieces, eaten with your hands, which is how it should be.

the rest of the return trips: jamón ibérico, from Spain’s black Iberian pigs, cut thin enough to read through. a tartare with toast and butter, no apologies. and little green Spanish peppers with a local cheese, because one cheese course a week is for amateurs. all of it completely unreal.

the glass was Wiener Gemischter Satz, Vienna’s own wine: several white grapes planted together in one vineyard, picked together and fermented together, like it’s 1850. Mayer am Pfarrplatz has been making it in Heiligenstadt since 1683, on the square where Beethoven lived in 1817. breakfast, lunch, and whatever came after, of champions.

bonus points for having a camel as the wine level instead of a boring line.