Kremsmünstererhaus

Kremsmünstererhaus occupies a 16th-century burgher's townhouse on Altstadt — the Old Town's main pedestrian street, three minutes from the Hauptplatz. The dining room is a vaulted stone cellar, candle-lit, intimate, with low timber beams and exposed-brick walls. The building was historically owned by the Kremsmünster Abbey and the restaurant retains the abbey's escutcheon above the door. Chef-patron Stefan Eder opened the restaurant in 2009 after a senior position at Vienna's Plachutta.

The cooking is contemporary Austrian with a Vienna-trained technique. Beef tartare with quail egg and rye toast; pike-perch from the Danube with brown butter and parsley root; Mühlviertel pork with Wachau apricot and fennel; a four-course bistro tasting that is the most appropriate Tuesday-night dinner in the Old Town. The menu rotates monthly and the producer's name is printed beside each ingredient.

The wine list runs to about two hundred and fifty selections — a strong Wachau Grüner Veltliner programme, a Burgenland row, and a smart Italian section. The by-the-glass programme is rotated weekly. Sommelier Anna Eder (the chef's wife) handles the room with quiet authority and a willingness to recommend lower-priced Austrian bottles over the more obvious imports.

Kremsmünstererhaus is the most genuinely useful neighbourhood restaurant in Linz's Old Town. It is busy on a Tuesday with locals, full on a Saturday with destination diners, and runs a serious set lunch (€32 for three courses) that is the city's most-defended business-meal booking. The cellar dining room is among the most atmospheric in the Altstadt — low beams, candlelight, the quiet acoustic of stone and plaster.

Kremsmünstererhaus is a deal-closing dinner where you want the room to do the ambient work and the cooking to lead the conversation. The vaulted cellar's quiet acoustic is conducive to substantive talk; the bistro tasting is exactly long enough for a serious meeting; the wine list handles a celebration glass without theatre. The Altstadt location is also discreet — well outside the festival circus.