Wine Food Pairing Goes to Sooss!

This time of year the heurigers are especially popular in Austria. The heurigen being a wine restaurant that is only open for a short period certain times of year. These delightful restaurants offer their own wines from their vineyards. Wine food pairing set "Richard" our friendly "navi" towards the village of Sooss to meet up with BigAl's cousin Carley and his wife, Guggi. Sooss has been around for a long time .... the church, the heart of the village, was built in the 1400's.

Carley chose this evenings meeting spot. The Weinbau Grabner-Fuchs, you can see, is a traditional, homey Austrian Heuriger that offers their own great wines and food freshly made in their deli ... in fact, you can watch them prepare the food!

Franz and Rosa Grabner have owned the place since1962 and it is extremely popular with all the locals, but tourists travel from all over to enjoy their hospitality.

They have several house specialties with including Blunz'n (blood sausage), Surschnitzel (a cutlet that has been "brined" before preparation), Schweinsbraten (pork roast) and Schinkenfleckerl (ham layered with wide noodles).

As I browsed the deli, the Schinkenfleckerl caught my eye and I had a portion of that along with a mixed salad. The Schinkenfleckerl was quite good ..... ham layered with wide lasagne type noodles and a crusty top! The mixed salad was fresh greens, some type of cold cabbage salad and then a sweet cole slaw type salad added on top. YUMMO!

Guggi had the same except she went with a frittanensuppe as a side. A brothy soup that has thin pancakes sliced "noodle like" and added to the broth, very good!

Well, the "boys" ... Houdini included went for the traditional fried chicken called gebackenhendl. this beats out Colonel Chicken any day! Dredged a couple of times in flour and special seasonings it is the best. Usually served with lemon slices to squeeze on top, it is a real treat for an American girl used to the American way of frying chicken.

Carly advised to go with the house Zweigelt. This red wine proved that all zweigelt's are not created equal. This was terrific and we all proved this by consuming several "achterls" (1/8 th of a liter)! Talk about a wine and food experience.










As usual, we always get a liter of mineralwasser mit gas (sparkling mineral water) to go along with. Houdini prefers his water to be still ... no "sparkles"!

We all had a great evening, the owners were terrific hosts and throughout the evening we had a few other friends stop by. Houdini even had a Maltese buddy stop by named Caruso. They have been "buds" since Houdini was just a baby, so a lot of sniffing had to be done to get reacquainted!

One of the cool things about restaurants in general in Austria ... no one rushes you ... There is no turning a table to make a profit. Once you sit down, you can have the table until the place closes down at night ... and this is quite normal. Everyone relaxes and eats and drinks or not ... it really doesn't matter. Young and old alike.

Wine food pairing in Sooss Austria with family. CHEERS!