The Sacher Hotel is a magnificent old hotel in Vienna’s first district. The cafe on the first floor has a marble-topped table and red interior, and the alternate staff wears black and white aprons. There is a music school facing the streets, and in the summer it turns into open-air seats. The community is great. The hotel is just across the street from the Opera House. The hotel opened in 1875 – Grace Kelly lives here with John F. Kennedy and Rudolph Nureyev.
Hotel Sacher is a piece of Vienna’s wealthy piece, and to be sure if this is your first trip to Vienna, you should head to the café to Sachertorte, the cake of the same name for the property. The odds are good, you’ll share a salon with a bus from Japanese or German tourists, but Saker is a Vienna agency anyway.
Not surprisingly, there is a lawsuit backstory behind Sack’s cake. Franz Sacher is said to have invented the cake while working as an apprentice at Prince Mettetnich’s Vienna Palace. Like some kind of pastry prodigy, he saved the day the chef fell ill. He handed over Sachertorte’s secret to his son Eduard, who was apprenticed at Demel, one of Vienna’s top bakeries.
Vienna Café Demel’s pastry box
Then things got messy. Demer claims Edward sold the rights to Sachtort. The quarrel began in 1938 when the Sacher Hotel had the courage to sell cakes under the name “original Sachertorte”. Demel said, without dice, we have the original version. The debate lasted for decades, and finally in the 1960s, Demer and Sacher settled. The Sacher calls their cake “original Sachertorte”, while Demel calls it the cake after Eduard’s name after the chocolate seal.
The truth is that both places make the Sachertorte stand out, even if it is a bit expensive. Like Sacher, Demel has a lovely room for cakes. There are fancy chandeliers and French windows, formally dressed waiters, and a glorious pastry box made of polished wood and brass decorations. The cake itself is an Austrian classic, it is a thick chocolate layer cake topped with apricot jam and wrapped in dark chocolate icing.
Leave it to the litigation bakers in Austrian history to decide which cake is “original”. You should order a Sachetorte multiple times and order it in your favorite cafe and decide for yourself which one is the best.
All images via Wikimedia (Creative Sharing)