Food and Drink | Fotoeins Fotografie

Posts from the ‘Food and Drink’ category

25T57 Vienna: Nepali lunch at Yak+Yeti

E56, V04.

First discovered in the living area in 2022; back there every summer since for their Nepali-Himalayan cuisine. A weekday lunch buffet with meat and vegetarian options. A nourishing glass of mango lassi. As spicy as I can handle. Not only do they have momos on their regular menu, they also have momo nights 🥟

*There used to be a lush green garden, but apparently the new owners of the larger property have other thoughts, much to the chagrin of the restaurant’s owners and its neighbours.*

*Monday and Thursday nights are momo nights: 1 price for as many momos it’ll take to satisfy the craving.*

Mango lassi; 1st course: papadams; tofu & peas in a curry sauce, pan-fried chicken wings, chicken curry, vegetable curry, jasmine rice to mop up the sauces; 2nd course (not shown): same as the 1st, but switched out chicken curry for cauliflower curry. All delicious as always, every summer since 2022.

*They’ve been around for awhile, communicating gratitude to their customers and neighbours.*

*The restaurant’s inside seating is very modest, but most of their seating is outside under cover.*

I received neither support nor compensation for this content. I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 3 July 2025. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

25T09 Berlin’s food signature

E08, B03.

All vegetarians and vegans may have to look away. I’m referring to two signature meals which are done best in the capital city, although variations can be found anywhere in the country.

First: currywurst. Grilled pork sausage cut up into chunks, slathered with ketchup, curry powder, and other seasonings; and toss in some fresh-made crispy fries. Here, I can also ask for “rot-weiß” or red-white for the common ketchup-mayo combo. Some might just have the sausage, some might have it with a crusty roll, but today, I’m feeling “Pommes, rot” (fries, red), which I order from Konnopke’s Imbiss, a city institution located underneath the tracks just south of Eberswalder Strasse U-Bahn station.

Second, the Döner. A tall spit of chicken or beef, slowly rotated next to flame, and finely shaved into strips. In-house bread-pocket with sesame seeds, toasty and crusty; spread with garlic- and hot-sauce; add lettuce, cabbage, onion, diced tomato and cucumber; meat; more sauce; a quick spritz of lime juice. This one from Ali Baba is a “monster”; compare its size next to a 1-Euro coin. Good thing it’s dinner time and I’m hungry. I make easy work of the Döner, and it’s washed down smoothly with a mango Ayran yogurt-drink. I do like me some Ayran, especially when the Döner is “extra scharf” 🌶️

*A “regular”-size 7€ Döner from Ali Baba, near U2-Bhf Eberswalder Strasse. That’s also a 1€-coin for size-comparison.*

I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 16 May 2025. I received neither request nor compensation for this content. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

San Francisco: Sam Wo tradition near the close

(Chinatown)

If a place provides repeatedly good reminders of personal cultural heritage through food, my expectation is one of a long-standing nature to the point of being eternal. But human beings are temporal and ephemeral, and this fact of nature must unfortunately extend to human institutions.

At address 713 Clay (near Kearny), Sam Wo (三和)* is a restaurant in San Francisco, operating as one of the oldest restaurants in the city’s Chinatown. The present owners have retired, their adult children are moving on, and the new ownership has put the future of the restaurant in question. The final day of operations is 27 January 2025, only a handful of days before Chinese New Year. Perhaps it’ll be a pause. And perhaps it’ll be gone.

I’d done my research prior to arrival, only to discover within weeks the restaurant would soon be closed. In the remaining weeks surrounding the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, I promised myself at least one visit to Sam Wo each week until the end: that their excellent “wok6 hei3” (鑊氣) is no hindrance but an encouragement. The quality of their “stir fry essence” means every meal is delicious, with every bite and flavour pointing directly to memories of an upbringing raised by immigrant parents from China’s southern province of Canton and a big chunk of time spent walking and eating within Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1970s and 80s.

I haven’t been here in the Bay Area very long, but in Sam Wo, I found a place a little like home, where I could also polish my rust in Cantonese (廣東話) and Toisan/Hoisan (台山語). I’ll be sad to see them go, and melt away into the annals of San Francisco’s much-storied Chinatown.

* The full name for Sam Wo is 三和粥粉麵, (read here left to right) whose first 2 characters represent “three harmonies” for congee (粥), broad flat rice noodles (粉), and thin egg noodles (麵). Historically, Chinese was written right to left.

The place, the food …

2025 postscript: there are new owners, and the new re-opening is Friday, September 5.

Vienna: Vollpension café, with love from Oma & Opa

Above/featured: Kühnplatz in the 4th district – 22 May 2022.

I never knew my grandparents, except for brief glimpses of mum’s mum, 阿婆, who died before I entered secondary school.

On a warm June day in 2022, I’m sitting in the basement of someone’s family home, lovingly decorated over decades by Omas and Opas. In Vienna’s 4th district, the idea behind Vollpension cafe is retirees do all the baking.

Upon arrival, a host seats me at a table where I’m presented with a “menu card” listing combination- and timing-options. Unlike other cafes in the city, one does not hang out or loiter here for hours, and that means there’s a maximum stay-duration for a specified combination purchase; that’s fine by me, as I choose one of the cake-and-beverage options. The server leaves to retrieve my cool drink, while I go up to the front counter and gauge the remaining options on Sunday mid-afternoon. I want something light on this warm late-spring day: Kardinalschnitt, made with sponge cake, meringue, and fruit jam. I order a slice of Kardinalschnitt mit Schlagobers (with whipped cream). Behind the counter is a kindly Oma to whom I relay in passable German I came all the way from Canada’s west coast to see this place. That impressed her enough that she asks me to come back for a 2nd but smaller piece.

There’s a good mix of ages among the staff. I chat briefly with one of the servers about what it’s like to work here at the café, the guests they’ve seen from different countries, and their favourite cake. Among some of the retired pensioners in house today, I have an additional conversation with a gentleman who has spent time with his family in Vancouver, Canada.

At the outset, some Viennese or Austrians might not seek this place out, although I can tell from surrounding conversations how much Viennese-German is being spoken. At any rate, this place works for me, and if I barely knew my grandparents, I can perhaps get a good taste and long look at life with Austrian grandparents, here at Vollpension in Vienna.

( Towards the end of this post is a 1-minute iPT6-video with a look inside the café. )

Vollpension, 4. Bezirk, Wieden, Wien, Vienna, Austria, Österreich, fotoeins.com

Inside Vollpension (X70).

Table 5 (X70).

Tables 6 and 7 (X70).

Table 8 (X70).

Front counter with daily offerings (X70).

Ameisen-Gugelhupf / Bundt cake with chocolate chips. No “Ameisen” (ants) were harmed or included in the cake-making process (X70).

Topfentorte / cream-cheese torte (X70).

Kardinalschnitte, made with sponge cake, meringue, and fruit jam (X70).

2nd, complimentary, but smaller slice of Kardinalschnitte, accompanied by cool unsweetened non-alcoholic lemon spritzer (X70).

Directions

Vollpension is centrally located on Schleifmühlgasse 16 with a second location at the MUK Wien (Music & Arts University of Vienna). Smaller versions of Vollpension might “pop up” elsewhere in the city during the summer season.

Public transport with Wiener Linien: in between U1/(U2)/U4 Karlsplatz and U4 Kettenbrückengasse; bus 59A to stop Schleifmühlgasse; or tram 1, 62, or Badener Bahn to stop “Paulanergasse.”

( View map location at OpenStreetMap )

My independent visit to Vollpension was neither requested nor supported. I made all images above on 22 May and 12 Jun 2022 with an Apple 6th-generation iPod Touch (iPT6) and Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime (X70). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-n7U.

Vienna: Stefanie Herkner’s homestyle cuisine

I’ve been thinking a lot about my father who died in 2014.

What he passed onto me are: an appreciation for authentic dining with a minimum of pretence, interests in geography and history, and an enthusiasm for highway drives and road trips. He also loved woodwork, gardening, and tinkering with the family car. By contrast, I like to dabble with memories and the act of memory.

I’ve also been thinking about how he would’ve viewed my experiences in Vienna.

In Vienna’s 4th district, cook and author Stefanie Herkner owns and operates her restaurant, Zur Herknerin, as a living memory of her father, Heinz, and her family’s Slovenian culinary heritage. Much of her story has appeared in a variety of publications: how her dad’s famous restaurant, Zum Herkner, helped spark and redefine contemporary Vienna cuisine; how she went to London to study art-and-culture management; how her parents tried to dissuade her from the restaurant industry; and how she returned home to Vienna and opened her own restaurant in mid-2013.

That’s the kind of story to pique my curiosity.

With a reservation for the opening slot at weeknight service, I arrive 15-minutes early to moderate street-traffic and a set of open doors. The space is light, airy, uncomplicated, and welcoming. A couple of servers and kitchen staff are out and about, preparing for the dinner rush. Captaining the ship is Frau Herkner, her voice a firm, steady, and encouraging guide. I chat briefly with her: I’ve flown over 8000 kilometres across the world to have a meal here, and that my love of diners and small restaurants comes from Dad, who worked many years in many diners as cook and line-cook.

What’s familiar on the dinner table to many in this part of the world is relatively new to me. My order is a delicious introduction to the family’s central European background.

Krautroulade mit Petersilerdäpfel und Rahm (Serbian-style stuffed cabbage roll): ground beef and pork fried with bacon, tomatoes, bell peppers and carrots, diced onions; that extra fat is always the flavour enhancer. The meat-and-rice mixture is stuffed into large cabbage leaves, rolled and gently simmered with garlic and bay leaves. Add perfectly cooked cut-up potatoes served with parsley, and served with a dollop of sour cream.

Almdudler-Radler: cold draft beer mixed with Almdudler, Austria’s national and herbal lemonade. The combination is refreshing on a warm early-summer day, and I think its slight sweet-and-bitter “bite” goes well with the savory Sarma.

Apfel-Strudel: phyllo pastry filled with chunks of regionally-grown apples, with cinnamon and nutmeg; light but substantive; more apple than pastry. The last polish is a Melange for a smooth finish.

To achieve her goal of delivering family favourites to customers, she emphasizes:

“Unsere Zutaten sind biologisch, saisonal, regional oder vom eigenen Hof.”
(Our ingredients come from products that are natural, seasonal, regional, or from our very own farm.)

Before leaving, I catch Frau Herkner’s attention one last time. I tell her how much I enjoy the food, and how my experience feels like an accepted invitation into her family home with, if our faith allows, the spirits of our respective fathers, present in the kitchen and at the table.

Food and ambience.
Nourishing and warmth.
A lot of heart and muscle memory.
A lot of family memory and history.
I think Dad would’ve liked this.

Because I really did; I wanted to believe.

( Click here for images )