A piece of boiled beef, typically from the rump cap, slowly poached with root vegetables and served in copper pans with a clear broth, apple horseradish, chive sauce, roesti and creamed spinach.
Where to eat it: 6 restaurants across 2 cities.
Tafelspitz was a court-cuisine dish under the Habsburgs and became a bourgeois Sunday lunch in 19th-century Vienna. Each cut of beef has its own name and use: Schulterscherzel for tenderness, Beinfleisch with the bone in, Kruspelspitz with cartilage. Plachutta opened his Wollzeile restaurant in 1986 specifically to cook the dish, with twelve cuts named on the menu. The dish remains the canonical Viennese boiled-beef tradition.
Common allergens: Milk
Tip from the editors. A bare tremble of stock, never a rolling boil; boiling toughens the beef. Reserve the marrow bones to serve on toast with sea salt as the first course.
Plachutta on Wollzeile in Vienna is the canonical Tafelspitz address, the boiled-beef pot served in copper pans with rösti, apple horseradish.
Signature: Tafelspitz, Beuschel
Order: Tafelspitz vom Schulterscherzel; the cut Franz Joseph is said to have favoured.
Tip: Open daily 11:30-23:30; the kitchen runs lunch through dinner without a break.
Plachutta Hietzing serves the family's canonical Tafelspitz across town in 1130 Hietzing, an opera-quiet 13th-district room that draws Schoenbrunn locals.
Signature: Tafelspitz, Beuschel
Order: Tafelspitz with the full set of sides; the cut of the day is the recommended order.
Tip: A quieter Tafelspitz alternative to Wollzeile, especially at lunch; the 1130 postcode makes parking easier too.
Restaurant Rote Bar inside Hotel Sacher on Philharmoniker Strasse in Vienna serves classic Viennese cuisine in a red-damask room across from the State Opera.
Signature: Tafelspitz, Wiener Schnitzel, Sachertorte
Order: Sacher's Tafelspitz, followed by the Original Sachertorte for dessert.
Tip: The winter garden seats face the Opera directly; ask for one when booking.
Zum Schwarzen Kameel on Bognergasse in Vienna has stood since 1618, the 1901 Jugendstil dining room and front-of-house Stehplatz for canapés a single.
Signature: Open-faced sandwiches, Tafelspitz
Order: Two or three of the open-faced canapés from the front-counter glass.
Tip: The standing-bar at the front is the quick-lunch entry; the dining room behind takes serious bookings.
Gasthaus Ubl on Pressgasse in Vienna's Wieden has been a family-run Beisl for over fifty years, the green-tiled stove and wood-panelled rooms turning out.
Signature: Zwiebelrostbraten, Schinkenfleckerl, Tafelspitz
Order: Zwiebelrostbraten with crisp onions; the kitchen's most-ordered plate.
Tip: Cash only; book by phone because the room is almost always full.
The canonical Zurich bourgeois room, open since 1924, with original Chagall, Miro and Bonnard on the dining-room walls. Geschnetzeltes, Tafelspitz, the canon.
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