Café Sperl

Café Sperl opened in 1880 on Gumpendorfer Straße in Mariahilf and has operated continuously through both World Wars, the inter-war Republic, and the post-war reconstruction with its interior almost completely untouched. The room is the cleanest surviving example of the Viennese kaffeehaus form: parquet floor, marble Thonet tables, the Wiener-Werkbund chairs original to the 1880 fit-out, the billiard tables along the back wall still in use. UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage inscription of Viennese kaffeehaus culture in 2011 specifically named Sperl as a defining example. The kitchen does the canon — Wiener Schnitzel, Apfelstrudel, Tafelspitz — with the Hausmann discipline that the more tourist-saturated rooms have lost.