Robert's bar — the second face of the Tachles

Everyone talks about the pierogi. Almost nobody talks about the bar.

There is a sentence we hear rather often here, usually somewhere between main course and dessert: „I had no idea you had a bar as well."

We cannot hold that against anyone. Whoever searches for us lands on the pierogi. In 2026 Gault&Millau called them „probably the best in Vienna", seven kinds, one of them vegan. That tells half the story. The other half begins roughly when the daylight goes out on Karmeliterplatz — and far fewer people know that half.

A living room early in the evening, a bar later on

The nice part is: nobody moves the furniture for it. It simply happens.

At six, neighbours from the 2nd district are sitting here, somebody is eating beef broth with noodles, a pram is parked at the next table. It smells of the kitchen. Polish posters from the sixties hang on the walls, jazz or something classical plays in the background, and along one wall a black-and-white film flickers away without sound.

Three hours later the same room is a different one. The kitchen noises grow quieter, the conversations longer, the light smaller. In the evening the living room is a bar — and because it stays the same room, it is a bar in which you can still understand one another. No bass taking your sentences apart. The film keeps running; now somebody is finally watching it.

At the weekend this goes on considerably longer than during the week.

Robert stands behind the bar. And he means it.

Robert is our head barman, and he is one of those people you should not ask about recipes if you are in a hurry.

He works on his drinks the way our kitchen works on its recipes: weigh up, taste, change, taste again. The only difference is that behind the kitchen there is a grandmother's handwriting, and behind the bar there is Robert's own head. Three of his creations are on our menu, and you will not find these names anywhere else: Tachles Pink Twist, Pistachio Velvet and Lemongrass Sour.

What is in them we will not reveal here. Not out of secrecy — but because that is the kind of information you get better from Robert himself, in about two sentences and with an expression no blog article can reproduce. Ask him. He explains gladly.

Part of his work rarely gets applause: we make the lemonades ourselves. Anyone sitting at the table through a long evening without drinking alcohol should not be fobbed off with a bottle of industrial fizz from the fridge. Incidentally, our menu also carries the line „DRINK RESPONSIBLY!". It is not there as decoration.

A cocktail bar in Leopoldstadt means, for us: small names, short distances

You recognise a bar less by the length of its list than by where the things come from. Ours mostly come from people whose names you can remember.

For wine we work with Austrian organic estates: Viktor Fischer from Traismauer-Wagram, Michael Grausenburger, Weingut Humer, Steinreich, Mayer am Pfarrplatz and Biohof No 5. These are not names a chain could offer you, because a chain would not buy at these quantities in the first place. For us it is exactly right.

For beer there is 100 Blumen — brewed in Vienna, a few districts from here — plus Murauer as well as Łomża and Tyskie, which have been here for a long time and which people ask for regularly.

And the coffee, because that belongs to the bar too and not only to the afternoon: it comes from the Alt Wien roastery. Vienna roasts, Vienna pours. The way from roaster to cup is about as long as one underground ride.

What is available right now is on the menu. Honestly, it is the better read than this paragraph.

A bar on Karmeliterplatz — and still a living room

We are a bar in Vienna 1020, but we are not a bar in the sense of „loud, crowded, take a number". We are more the place where a conversation that started over dinner is simply allowed to carry on, without anyone tapping a foot and glancing at the table.

That is why people who want to talk come here: neighbours from the 2nd district, musicians who tried something out downstairs in the cellar beforehand, couples on a second date, people after work, students on too little sleep. Over the course of an evening the crowd changes almost as reliably as the light.

„Talking helps, so do pierogi." That sentence is not lying around here for no reason. Tachles comes from Yiddish and means: get to the point, speak openly — and a bar in which you can hold a conversation suits a name that means exactly that. More on this in What does Tachles actually mean?

We are at Karmeliterplatz 1, 1020 Vienna. U1 Nestroyplatz, U2 Taborstraße, tram 2 or bus 5A — all a short trip. The current opening hours are at the bottom of every page. You can pay cash or by card.

You book a table by phone on +43 1 212 03 58, by email to tachles@gmx.at or through the form here on the site. You cannot order or have anything delivered — for that you really have to come here. Which is the better part anyway.

And next time you are here for the pierogi: the room looks different late in the evening. Feel free to stay in your seat and have a look.