In a town where restaurants come and go from year to year, Wienerstube has long been a standby restaurant for my family. Almost every ski vacation featured one morning when we’d walk over and enjoy a hearty, leisurely breakfast. My dad recalls a table that would inevitably be occupied by U. Mich. faculty in-season; my mom found the waitress’ dirndls charming.

But things change; my parents report that on their last visit, the food and the coffee were terrible. And no more dirndls — although I have to say, I felt relieved on the waitresses’ account.

I wasn’t sure whether we’d be visiting the Weinerstube this year, till I read that a new Austrian chef had taken over. Passing the restaurant, I looked at the menu for New Year’s Eve dinner (which I surmise never came off), and my appetite was piqued. So the next day, skirting some crime tape from the previous day’s bomb scare, my dad and I stopped in for lunch.

Turns out lunch is a good time to check out what the new chef is up to, as the lunch menu is more authentically Austrian than the wider-ranging dinner menu.

Dad had wurst “salad,” strips of fine-grained sausage, Emmenthaler and onion in vinaigrette. I was really interested by this, as it was one of those dishes that redefined my idea of a salad, like baba ghanoush, or the first time I had a single-vegetable salad, in France. You can have a salad of sausage and cheese! Madness, but in a good way. It also came with some truly excellent baguette.

My schnitzel was crisp and tasty (which is all you can really say about schnitzel at its best), served with a lemon half properly sheathed in a muslin shower cap. It came with German potato salad, typically tangy and mayo-free; and orange-flavored carrot salad, a nice twist on a basic.

Service, alas, was atrociously clueless.

Wienerstube Restaurant
633 E. Hyman Avenue
Aspen, CO 81611
(970) 925-3357