The 18 Hottest Breakfast and Brunch Places in Vienna

By Tas TóbiásLast updated: Apr. 17, 2024

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There's nothing extraordinary about Vienna's top breakfast restaurants, but they deliver what we're after with such establishments: a well-made omelet, a tasty shakshuka, an Instagram-friendly avocado-salmon bowl. Most of these places serve breakfast food until well into the afternoon and alcohol, too, in case you were wondering.

#1 Sneak In

Sneak in is a popular breakfast restaurant in the heart of Vienna’s fashionable District 7. There's nothing typically Viennese about this sleek space complete with modern furnishings, stylish servers, and dishes like vegan scrambled “eggs”, avocado-salmon bowl, shakshuka, and huevos rancheros, but who said your Vienna trip must be limited to old-school coffeehouses manned by grumpy waiters wearing tuxedos?

The food is very tasty, the service kind, and the enormous windows ideal to glimpse the bougie neighborhood known as hipsterville. Mains are €10-15 and advance booking is an absolute must.

#2 Hildebrandt Cafe

Trendy Millennial residents from Vienna’s elegant District 8 (Josefstadt) fill the small tables of Hildebrandt, a popular breakfast restaurant in this sleepy but prosperous part of town. The location is the run-down and charming Palace Schönborn, designed by Baroque starchitect Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt, hence the moniker (the restaurant shares the ground floor with the quirky Austrian Folk Museum).

Amid Vienna's Middle Eastern and avocado-dominated breakfast landscape, here you can also enjoy a simple and satisfying plate of ham and eggs. Forget about a table without advance booking. Breakfast served until 3 p.m.

#3 Propeller

One of the most popular breakfast restaurants of Vienna is located along the lively Margaretenstraße in District 5. Propeller delivers a predictable but flawless experience: courteous waiters, on-trend breakfast dishes, inviting interior. Locals and tourists both come here, most of them stylish female Millennials. Be sure to book ahead, and try asking for a table by the oversized windows. Breakfast served until 3 p.m.

#4 Café Schopenhauer

If an old-school and a modern Viennese coffeehouse had an offspring, it would look like Café Schopenhauer. High ceilings, oversized windows, marble-topped tables, creaking floors, yes, but also a sleek concrete counter, open kitchen, and fashionably dressed servers. The menu, too, reflects this fusion of old and new: avocado toast and soy milk matcha appear next to eggs in glass, frankfurters, and buttered kaiser roll.

The crowd leans fashionable Millennials and upper-middle-class folks from nearby Währing (District 18). As a hat-tip to the intellectual ethos of the Vienna coffeehouse, there's an entire corner laid out with books for sale. The dishes are named after famous philosophers; my favorite is "Simone de Beauvoir" – espresso with a cigarette. Why Schopenhauer? The reason is disappointingly prosaic: the cafe is located by Schopenhauer Street.

#5 Café Prückel

Known by all Viennese, Prückel is a coffeehouse establishment. The place is located along the Ringstraße, with a vast interior fitted with floor-to-ceiling windows and giant mirror panels. Being in the well-off city center, District 1, means customers are upscale and elegant, but tourists also venture here, as do stylish students from the University of Applied Arts across the street (with an excellent museum, the MAK).

Prückel owes its inviting midcentury interior to a 1955 refurbishment by architect Oswald Haerdtl (the back section has regained its original Art Nouveau details, but the front is where the action is). The food is solid and includes both breakfast dishes and savory Austrian classics. The newspaper selections, laid out on a stick in typical Viennese fashion, range from local dailies to the New York Times. A true-to-Vienna cafe experience.

#6 Espresso Burggasse

Part cafe, part breakfast restaurant, part bar, Espresso is an effortlessly cool establishment in Vienna's fashionable District 7. Although it opened in 2004, Espresso will take you back in time to the 1960s: neon sign, red leather banquettes, small plastic-topped tables, midcentury chairs (the ceiling shows leftover frescoes from the bakery once here).

The breakfast dishes and the lunch specials are delicious, the coffee distinctly old school. Evenings also get lively, when the place transforms into a natural wine-forward bar. Both the servers and the crowd are trend-conscious, but not in a pretentious way. Closed on Sunday.

#7 Meinklang Hofladen

Meinklang is best known as a pioneer of natural wines, but the Burgenland-based family winery is more of an integrated agricultural farm: they raise cattle (Angus), pigs (Mangalica), chicken, and grow their own crops on hundreds of hectares of land near the Austria-Hungary border. To bring their bounty of nature closer to well-off, urban consumers, in 2022 the Michlits family opened an eye-catching restaurant and store on Vienna's charmingly fashionable Margaretenstraße in District 5.

Here, nearly everything comes from Meinklang's Demeter-certified biodynamic farm: wines, sausages, eggs, meats, fresh and pickled veggies. There's also a bakery on the premises serving delicious sourdough breads and morning pastries made from wheat, rye, oat, millet, and barley.

#8 Figar

A buzzing breakfast and brunch restaurant in Vienna, Figar draws a female-heavy Millennial crowd with internationally inspired and tasty breakfast hits: eggs Benedict on a bed of sourdough; avocado toast; English breakfast, granola bowls. In the afternoons, after 3 p.m., updated burgers and salads take over the slim menu. The location is the fashionable District 7, the inside an industrial-chic hall with a full-service bar. Advance booking is recommended.

#9 Drechsler

Chic locals and tourists fill the small marble-topped tables under the barrel vaulted ceiling of Drechsler, one of Vienna’s hottest breakfast restaurants. The dishes, which are available all day, are nearly limitless and not of the Austrian kind: pancake, French toast, granola, avocado toast are all served, as are fruit juices, beers, sparkling wines, and cocktails. The food is a bit inconsistent, but the vibes reliably cool. Advance booking is highly recommended. Vienna's popular produce market, Naschmarkt, is right across the street (as is the legendary gay bar, Cafe Savoy).

#10 Ströck Feierabend (Burggasse)

Ströck is a city-wide chain of bakeries, most of them the reliable workhorse type, but I’m here to highlight their Burggasse shop, whose croissants have no equal in Vienna. Freshly made throughout the day, tender and flaky, but also rich and elastic and enclosed in a shiny glaze. Other treats, too, exist – wonderful rolls, Stangerln (bread sticks), breakfast pastries – and a spacious and comfortable dining area where egg-based breakfasts are served. All this in the center of Vienna’s most fashionable neighborhood (District 7).

#11 Wirr

Wirr is a laid-back breakfast-all-day restaurant lining Burggasse, the beating heart of Vienna’s lively District 7. All sorts of people flock here, for good reason. The vibes are unquestionably cool: chipped walls, eclectic furnishings, ear-catching music, oversized windows, and a stylish and kind staff. The highlight of the breakfast menu is the “Naher Osten,” consisting of thick labneh and two bulbs of poached eggs sitting in a honey and almond-slicked sauce.

#12 Cafe Korb

Korb is a busy cafe in Vienna's city center. It was the hub of underground artists in the 1960s and 1970s, at a time when Vienna was hardly known for its embrace of the new and the unconventional. Today, many tourists stumble in here, but the ambiance of the cluttered space has retained some of its irreverence.

A midcentury remodeling left its mark on the interior, which is fitted with linoleum floors and plastic-topped tables (the futuristic but impractical bathroom merits a visit to the below-ground level). The Viennese breakfast dishes and savory classics are solid, but the prices reflect the downtown premium.

#13 Cafe in der Burggasse 24

Coolness is the main appeal of Café in der Burggasse 24, a sizable breakfast restaurant located in Vienna's bougie District 7. The food is solid, the coffee just average, but you're really here for the scene – the city's hip twentysomethings who camp out with their MacBooks in the eclectically furnished hall in the back. There, the firelogs turn out to be more than decorative: a server will occasionally throw a couple of pieces into the corner fireplace that provides warmth and charm in the winter months. (The main space, anchored by a giant sofa, connects to a designer clothing store next door.)

#14 Café Frida

Yppenplatz is a gentrifying neighborhood a bit outside Vienna's city center in District 16, where a mainly Turkish community lives together with a growing number of young alternatives. Frida, a buzzing breakfast restaurant, caters to this latter demographic. The dishes lean Mexican, with lots of egg-based breakfast foods and burritos, as well as vegan and vegetarian options (plus wines and craft beers).

Frida is most enjoyable in the warmer months, when sitting at the outdoor tables overlooking the square. Once here, you can't and shouldn't miss the lively Brunnenmarkt, a long row of Turkish and Middle Eastern vendors.

#15 Zimmerservice

Zimmerservice is an inviting, family-run breakfast-all-day restaurant in Vienna’s elegant, although not particularly eventful District 8. Roman and Edske, the husband and wife duo, freshly prepare the dishes each day based on available produce. Smoothies, egg-based dishes, flaky breakfast pastries, sandwiches, cakes, and local wines are all served. As is coffee-to-go, if you just want to drop in.

#16 OBEN

In 2003, Vienna’s central library moved to the Gürtel, into a striking building lifted high above the busy street level. On the top floor of this enormous structure sits Oben, a restaurant shaped in a semicircle so that most tables provide a view. The breakfast dishes show various gastronomic inspirations; a good choice is the Plant Power, featuring sides of kimchi, fermented carrots, samosa, chickpeas, a granola bowl, and seasonal fruits and vegetables. The crowd is local, prices somewhat elevated given the panoramic location.

#17 Ramasuri

Ramasuri is a lively breakfast restaurant in inner-Leopoldstadt (District 2), a gentrifying part of Vienna across the Danube Canal. The breakfast dishes are extensive, perfectly passable, and a bit pricey. Advance booking is a good idea, especially for the outdoor tables. Two comparably trendy restaurants – Mochi and Ansari – are located just across the square from it.

#18 Neni (Naschmarkt)

Vienna’s historic Naschmarkt today is an enormous Turkish and Middle-Eastern produce market most popular among tourists. Over time, some of the vendor stands have transformed into chic restaurants, such as Neni, which is one of the institutions here (the Neni brand has since expanded to places like Berlin, Paris, and Amsterdam).

Opened in 2009 and owned by an Israeli-Austrian family, the breakfast dishes are inspired by the Middle East – shakshuka, “Israeli breakfast,” and there’s of course avocado toast with smoked salmon. Try to book ahead, else you might be exiled to the cramped upstairs tables with no views.