Zum Schwarzen Kameel

The Restaurant

Zum Schwarzen Kameel was established in 1618 by Johann Baptist Cameel as a spice shop at Bognergasse 5 in the Innere Stadt of Vienna, on a small pedestrianised street that runs between the Graben and Am Hof and remains one of the most architecturally preserved corners of the historic First District. The business evolved across the 17th and 18th centuries from spice shop into a delicatessen, in the 1820s into a wine tavern that became renowned for sourcing the best wines from across Europe (the wine arrived by the barrel and matured in three storeys of cellars beneath the Bognergasse building before bottling for sale), and across the 19th century into one of the most-considered Viennese social salons - frequented by Beethoven, the Habsburg aristocracy, and the senior figures of Vienna's intellectual and political life. The Imperial Court Supplier title was granted by Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1866, formally recognising the business as one of the senior purveyors to the Habsburg court, and Zum Schwarzen Kameel has retained that quasi-imperial status across the four hundred and seven years of its continuous operation.

The current building at Bognergasse 5 is a 1901 Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) reconstruction in the elegant late-Habsburg architectural register: the polished mahogany-and-marble bar runs the length of the front room with original brass fixtures, the ceiling features the room's signature Art Nouveau floral plasterwork, the walls carry a careful collection of 19th-century Viennese oil paintings and historical portraits, and the famous black-camel motif (a play on founder Johann Baptist Cameel's surname) appears in carved wood, in painted ceramic, and in the brass fittings throughout the room. The downstairs operation runs a two-part dining grammar: the historic front bar serves the city's most-considered open-faced sandwich and small-plate service (the famous Kameel Broetchen - small open-faced sandwiches with house-cured Tafelspitz, Schwarzwald ham, smoked salmon and various Viennese pates - have been the bar's signature service for more than a century), supported by a careful wine programme that draws on the room's historic cellar depth, and the back dining room serves classical Viennese cooking (the Tafelspitz, the Wiener Schnitzel, the Backhendl, the Kaiserschmarrn) at a level that has anchored the room's full operating run.

The upstairs Beletage Zum Schwarzen Kameel - the senior chef-driven dining room added to the historic ground-floor operation in recent decades and now recognised by the Michelin Guide - operates a more contemporary Modern-European menu while drawing on the historic cellar's depth and the building's architectural quality. The wine programme across both rooms runs more than seven hundred references with extraordinary depth in Austrian wine (more than two hundred Gruener Veltliner and Riesling bottlings from senior Wachau, Kamptal and Kremstal producers, a careful Burgenland-and-Steiermark progression, a serious Smaragd-tier collection), a substantial Burgundy and Bordeaux section, a careful Italian progression, and a deliberately Imperial-era Champagne and dessert-wine selection that draws on the room's historic delicatessen-and-wine-merchant heritage. For a Vienna evening that needs to register as authentically rooted in the city's full architectural and cultural history rather than as a contemporary chef-driven destination, Zum Schwarzen Kameel is the city's first call and has been for four centuries.