Landhauskeller

Landhauskeller occupies the 1590 vaulted cellar of the Styrian Landhaus (the provincial parliament building) in the heart of the UNESCO old town, entered through a Renaissance courtyard that is itself one of the photographed scenes in Graz. The restaurant has been in continuous operation since 1894 in its current commercial form, but the cellar has served food in some capacity for more than 400 years. The dining rooms — there are four, arranged along vaulted stone tunnels — are the single most atmospheric setting in the city.

The menu is Styrian classical. Backhendl (fried chicken, Styrian style with pumpkin-seed oil mayonnaise) is the signature. Roast Styrian beef with horseradish, Zander (pikeperch) from Lake Neusiedl, Tafelspitz with apple-horseradish, and a Styrian Wurzelfleisch (root-vegetable pork pot) hold steady on the menu year-round. The desserts are Austrian institution: Kaiserschmarrn, Topfenknödel, Marillenknödel in season. It is not the most technically ambitious kitchen in the city — that is Der Steirer — but it is the most atmospheric.

Service is formal without being stiff. White linen, silver service, a wine list that runs eight pages including a deep catalogue of Schilcher and Styrian single-vineyard Sauvignon Blancs. The private salons — there are three — seat eight, twelve, or twenty-four and are used constantly for law-firm and banking-industry lunches from the nearby courts. Book three days out for weekdays, seven for weekends. Landhauskeller is the correct restaurant for a Graz client lunch that needs to feel weighty.

For Impress Clients: Landhauskeller is a four-hundred-year-old vaulted room in the provincial parliament building, one minute from the Graz courts, with three private salons and silver service. It is the Graz lunch a visiting Vienna or Munich partner will write home about. The menu reads classical Styrian — Backhendl, Tafelspitz, Zander — and cannot mis-step. The private salon for eight is bookable with 72 hours' notice.