Peruse the hospitality headlines or cringeworthy year-end restaurant round-up lists and you’d be forgiven for thinking all the openings worth booking materialised in the past month or two. Not so. Of course, novelty nourishes the food industry but remember that only a fraction of these flash-in-the-pan openings may still be trading in a few short years. It’s an understatement to call hospitality a demanding industry and fortunes – like a sloppy soufflé – can fall as quickly as they rise (in both cases due to imperfect concentrations of hot air).

What’s more, it may take some places time to tinker with service, perfect the patter to be worth visiting at all: truly great restaurants can sometimes be measured in generations rather than seasons or by a single decent service when the reviewer rolled around. If there’s one city that mingles the hard-won, time-tested lessons with a little ingenuity, it’s the Austrian capital. Here’s what I learned on a recent Viennese whirl.

How to perfect a polite goodbye
Dinner at the recently redecked Reznicek in the 9th district is a pleasure. Simon Schubert and Julian Lechner have done a peerless job with the careful wooden fitout and seasonal menu, and they deploy a pleasing sleight of hand when it comes to politely telling guests to kindly bugger off. When it came time to turn our table (those people sipping Sekt at the bar were indeed waiting for us to leave), our hosts wheeled out a wooden trolley groaning with Viennese wafers, sweets and brownies in cut-glass cases and bowls, and a wooden box of cigarettes. “Sorry you won’t have time for dessert today,” was the practiced, friendly refrain. “But please help yourself to anything from the takeaway treats wagon.” It turns out that there is an elegant way to turf out the foot-draggers. London restaurants take note

That not all seats are equal
If you haven’t booked, then expect a queue for a weekend table under the red awnings of the peerless 400-year-old Zum Schwarzen Kameel restaurant in the city’s Gold Quarter. But Vienna is also a city of manners and means. Dropping an academic title on a booking here might secure you a better table (doing so in London or New York may only raise a giggle). We queued outside ahead of a posse of impatient twenty-somethings in designer threads who were tutting and huffing a cigar in mock disbelief at the impertinence of the short delay. They weren’t our crowd, so one of our party acted decisively. A quick smile, some beginner’s German and a natter to the front of house (we didn’t mention monocle, but we did enquire about some space with the grown-ups inside). We were whisked to a wood-panelled booth in moments. As our drinks arrived, and the drizzle began beyond the window, our restless acquaintances were being chivvied to a rowdier section outside and seemed rather happy with their lot. Everything was in its right place – a great front-of-house sees such things as this done effortlessly. A great restaurant makes space for many tribes too.

How family are the brand guardians
Generations-old businesses seem to be everywhere in Austria, and at its best having a surname above the door can indicate a proprietor who keeps things, well, personal. That’s the policy of Peter Friese, who has run Zum Schwarzen Kameel since 1977, and who personally oversaw the busy service, clipping across the cobblestones and then the baize carpets, past the ornate bars and sandwich counter, all while directing his fleet of white-jacketed waiters towards empty glasses and rumbling tums. You won’t see that in a venture-capital-backed “concept”, or if successful restaurants suddenly open 10 offshoots. Perhaps it’s one reason why the dark-furred dromedary has survived across the centuries.

Why cities should be themselves
Vienna has Catholic taste in several senses: there’s much to recommend it, something for every taste and an almost sacral regard for closing the shops on Sundays. I needed to fight my knee-jerk instinct for suggesting that Austria should reform restrictive trading hours for the convenience of visitors. But keeping them also has a pleasing flipside for residents. Perhaps the Austrian capital just doesn’t want (or need) to be too like Tokyo or New York? Perhaps people want a rest instead? While it’s an inconvenience for tourists who have forgotten a toothbrush and need a replacement, not many locals seemed to be grousing about it on their serene Sunday strolls around the Stadtpark.

That not all change is good…
One discovery was made on my pilgrimage to coffee and confectionery shop Julius Meinl. You may know its famous logo, of a boy in profile wearing a fez, apparently evoking the trade routes that brought coffee to Vienna. The marque – already a classic – was refined to a monochromatic silhouette in 2004 by Matteo Thun. Today it’s suddenly absented from the shop’s gourmet food packaging and the sign above the flagship on Graben in the 1st district. I would’ve gone into the shop and asked: why ditch a beloved logo for what I imagine are reactionary tastes that will likely change again tomorrow? But no one was around to comment and the shop was shut: it was Sunday, after all.

…and how ageing gracefully is underrated
If you only go to one café, swerve the tourist traps and try Die Cafetière: a recent tip-off on Wipplingerstrasse. Owner Peggy Strobel took over the former Naber Kaffee shop and roastery in 2023 – the space is replete with cream tiling, dark wood and a perfectly politically-incorrect mosaic of a turban-wearing coffee-drinker in front of a minaret outside. While common wisdom might have told her to gut the place and build something that could be turned into a chain or flipped, Strobel kept the original curving 1960s bar with its brass detailing and brolly stand. There’s a ceiling fresco and tiled walls, to which she has added a fetching Thonet showroom at the rear with additional seating in a wonderfully mid-century-feeling space. That’s before I riff on the homemade pastries and the just-so house-roasted beans in the Grosser Brauner. This may not be the way to get rich but it is the way to run a super little café that can teach us all a thing or two. In hospitality it can pay to rebuff the trends, endless refits and the restaurant round-up lists. A recipe for success can take time to perfect.