Hunger drove us to the first restaurant we stumbled upon near the Karlskirche (St. Charles Church) in Vienna. Dining at the historic Café Museum turned out to be a pleasant… and disappointing experience.
Last updated: June 14, 2025
Stepping Inside the Café Museum, Vienna
Address: Operngasse 7 1010 Vienna, Austria
Established in 1899, the historic Café Museum is one of the most interesting dining places in the Innere Stadt of Vienna. The place doesn’t boast any opulent decor or suggest any extraordinary experiences once you first step inside. But take a little “tour” (or request a special reservation), and you’ll discover a stunning library room, filled with books in a reading-inspired ambiance.
We didn’t know anything about this secret room of the Café Museum before our accidental discovery on one cold Sunday afternoon. After exploring Vienna the whole morning, by afternoon our bodies demanded some substantial energy restoration.
Combining this urgent matter with experiencing a traditional Viennese restaurant looked like a win-win situation. Thus, without searching for any other places to eat nearby, we stopped inside the Café Museum. And what an interesting lunch we had… Our dining experience at the Café Museum turned out to be good, interesting, and disappointing.
Dining Experience at the Café Museum in Vienna
We don’t frequent expensive sit-down restaurants for a few reasons. First, you can get the taste of divine traditional cuisine at small cafes or even street vendors for a fraction of the price these top-notch restaurants charge. Second, regardless of the place we travel to, our first stop is always a local grocery store where we buy some essentials and prepare at least a few of our meals.
But when we eat out, we want to enjoy our food and environment without any compromises.
From the first glance, the Café Museum looked stunning with a welcoming ambience, cozy booths, elegant personnel, and a lot of foreign guests. Nearly 90 percent of the visitors during our dining experience at the Café Museum spoke English.
Since there were four of us (three adults and one baby), a waiter offered us to sit in the middle row that had more room. Shortly after that he brought us a menu in English, which was very considerate of him. Yet by this time, I had already glanced at the German version of the menu that lay on the table and noticed that they didn’t have any vegan-friendly options.
When the waiter came back, I asked if they had any non-dairy, meat-free dishes. The poor boy clearly didn’t understand me. So I stopped annoying him with my German and asked (in English this time) if they could customize a dish. The answer came back right away, “I don’t have it.” (It looked like his English wasn’t any better than my German.)
Roshan was ready to leave. But since I had some snacks in my purse, I insisted on staying. Roshan and his dad ordered what they wanted, while I was devouring my own bread rolls and some dates in a fancy restaurant in the center of Vienna. The irony wasn’t lost on me…
Food at the Café Museum
It took a while for the food to arrive at our table. But once there, it looked beautiful. Roshan confirmed the food tasted amazing, probably even better than it looked, which already spoke volumes. But as a person who likes to eat a lot, Roshan was unimpressed with their “small” portions. For the record, they were standard European food sizes.
And as expected, dining at the Café Museum was an expensive experience. In the evening, we got some wraps from one of the small food stands in the Innere Stadt. They had different options, including vegan dishes. All the food tasted super good and didn’t cost us even half of what we had paid at the Café Museum.
Library Room
While Roshan and his dad were finishing their food, I went to a restroom and got lost. (There was no way to get lost, but somehow I managed to do it.) One door that looked more appealing to me, led to an empty dining room. And that room was everything I didn’t expect to see at the Café Museum. It was adorned with several floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with all kinds of books and some tables and chairs in the middle. Was it a secret library of the Café Museum?
I looked around and hurried to leave the intriguing dining room. For some reason, I felt like a trespasser and didn’t want anybody to catch me there. Later I found out that the Café Museum has been offering regular readings since October 2011. And it was not hard to guess where these author-fans meetings normally take place.
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