Guest garden on Karmeliterplatz: sitting outside in 1020

A guest garden is not the same as a few tables in the open air

Anyone can put up a Schanigarten. Tables out, chairs with them, done. Whether you then want to sit there for one hour or three is not decided by the seating. It is decided by what you look at and what you hear.

We sit at Karmeliterplatz 1, in Leopoldstadt. That means: no traffic at the back of your neck, no traffic-light cycle taking over the conversation every two minutes. You look out onto a square. And a square is something other than a street — it has no direction. People come from everywhere, stop, talk for a moment, move on. Some of them do not.

Anyone looking for a guest garden in Vienna is usually looking for exactly that, without putting it that way: a place where sitting outside does not mean sitting closer to an exhaust pipe.

Nominated three times for the Goldener Schani

Briefly, because it belongs here: our guest garden was nominated three times for the Goldener Schani, the award for Viennese guest gardens.

And that is the end of this paragraph. We do not hang a certificate in the window and we certainly do not talk about it at the table. We mention it because it is true and can be checked — and because it sums up rather well that somebody thought about this garden instead of merely making use of floor space.

The more interesting question is what it feels like to sit there anyway.

Who sits outside with us

First: the neighbours. That is not a courtesy phrase, that is the order. The people of the 2nd district are our most important guests, and in the garden you see it immediately. Someone comes past with a dog and stays for a drink. Two people who meet here by chance end up eating together. People talk across two tables without anyone finding it awkward.

Then the culture crowd. Musicians, people who write, people who have played in our cellar or have that still ahead of them. For us the garden is often the before and the after of an evening on the stage downstairs.

Then guests who come specially to eat — for the pierogi, for barszcz, for bigos, for szarlotka. And couples on a first or hundredth evening, people from around thirty upwards, students.

What connects them all is fairly unspectacular: they want to talk. Not to network, not to have an experience. To talk. That is also why our garden is not one where you have to shout over the music.

From the market morning into autumn

During the day the Karmelitermarkt turns the square into a market: shopping bags, unloading, business. In the late afternoon it goes quiet for a while, the stalls are closed, and Karmeliterplatz is simply a square.

That is exactly when we open. Our guest garden is therefore not a lunchtime garden but an evening garden — you do not arrive in the market hour but in the hour after it. The afternoon becomes evening, the façades all around grow warmer, the noise on the square goes down instead of up. If you are looking for a restaurant with a garden in Vienna in order to actually spend an evening there and not just eat quickly: that is the hour to come.

Later something shifts once more. In the evening our living room turns into a bar. Inside, Polish jazz and classical music play, sometimes a black-and-white film runs along the wall, and behind the bar stands Robert with his own creations — Tachles Pink Twist, Pistachio Velvet, Lemongrass Sour. Anyone who prefers to go without takes a homemade lemonade or a coffee; we do not roast it ourselves, but we did choose it, and it comes from the Alt Wien roastery. The garden follows this shift, only more quietly than inside. For many people that is precisely the reason to stay outside.

And yes, a Schanigarten in Vienna is a seasonal affair, every child here knows that. The first evenings that work out come earlier than you think. The last ones are almost always the loveliest: when it is already turning cool, you put on a jumper and stay outside anyway, because going in would feel like stopping. In between lies a whole season in which the square does what squares do — it gathers people in.

Practical things, so you do not have to search

• Address: Karmeliterplatz 1, 1020 Vienna, in the Karmeliter quarter.
• Getting here: U1 Nestroyplatz, U2 Taborstraße, tram 2, bus 5A. By public transport it is easy.
• Open: the current opening hours are at the bottom of every page.
• Prams: you can get in with a pram. For some people that alone decides whether an evening out is possible at all — which is why it stands here and not in the small print.
• Paying: cash and by card.
• Booking: by phone on +43 1 212 03 58, by email to tachles@gmx.at, or right here: book a table.

One honest sentence about booking, because otherwise we would be pretending to have everything under control: we cannot guarantee you a particular table in the garden. Weather, demand, chance. Just tell us that you would like to sit outside — then we will try, and it usually works out.

We are here for you. Since 2010. In summer, a few metres further out than usual.