The Best Places in Austria

A vaulted ceiling and heavy timber give this farmhouse restaurant in the Salzburg Alps its particular weight, the kind of room that makes you feel the altitude. The kitchen leans into traditional Austrian regional cooking, with seasonal tasting menus available on weekends by pre-booking. The wine list runs exclusively Austrian, and the terrace looks out over the Hohe Tauern. Solid mountain eating, no theatrics required.

Murano glass chandeliers in jewel colors hang above a dining room that also manages to feel collected rather than curated, with figurines and art filling the corners. This lakeside restaurant sits tucked away above the Wallersee, and the terrace view over the water is the kind that makes people linger. The menu roams freely, moving from oysters with lemon marmalade to dim sum without much apology, and the service keeps pace without fuss.

A family-run inn in the hills outside Innsbruck that has been feeding people since before anyone thought to write it down. The dining rooms are cosy in the Tyrolean way, all warm wood and no irony, and the menu follows suit: local produce, traditional recipes, very little fuss. The wine soup and the spinach ravioli have their regulars, and the Sachertorte closes the argument for dessert.

A lakeside restaurant beside the Wallersee where the menu is built almost entirely around fish and snails, which is either an unusual pairing or the only honest pairing, depending on how you feel about freshwater Austria. Pike-perch, crayfish, mussels, and herb-dressed snails anchor the menu, with pastries doing reliable work at the end. The terrace in summer is the obvious move, but the interior holds its own with a maritime-themed fit-out that stops short of kitsch.

A centuries-old farmhouse sitting on a sun-drenched plateau about 1,000 meters above the valley, with mountain views that make the drive up feel like a reasonable life choice. This all-day regional restaurant serves traditional Austrian cooking with the occasional left turn, lobster gyoza alongside bread dumplings, all made from fresh, seasonal ingredients. Dine in wood-paneled nooks or on the light-filled veranda, and pick up house-made preserves on the way out.

The family runs a butcher's shop on the premises, which tells you something about the schnitzel. This is an old-school Austrian inn beside the village church, with rustic dining rooms and a terrace for fine days. The menu runs from tartare and Tafelspitz to locally caught fish, with a rotating set menu on the creative side. It has been around forever, and the Langwallner family shows no sign of changing that.

The host has been known to pull up a chair and sit with you, which tells you a lot about the mood of this wood-panelled Alpine dining room. The chef hunts, forages, and mills his own corn, then folds the results into a short seasonal menu you can take à la carte or as a set. The cooking is rooted deep in Vorarlberg, with mountain cheese and foraged herbs doing most of the talking.

A terrace over the lake sets the tone for this relaxed restaurant inside the Neusacherhof, where the kitchen takes traditional Alpine regional cooking and nudges it somewhere more interesting without losing the soul of the original. The menu runs à la carte plus daily specials, and if choosing feels like too much work, the team will just compile a surprise menu from whatever those are. Modern mountain-lodge room, unhurried pace, food that actually tastes like somewhere.

A centuries-old house on the road to the Basilika Rankweil, with shady plane trees shading the terrace and a vaulted tapas bar running Thursday through Saturday. The kitchen does surprise menus only, with diners choosing the number of courses, built around leaf-to-root and nose-to-tail principles. It's a regional, seasonal restaurant with rustic bones and modern instincts, and the wine list doubles as a shop.

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame vineyard terraces and the hills rolling out behind Leibnitz, so you're essentially eating inside a painting. This is a casual-smart restaurant where seasonal cooking leans contemporary and the wine list is long enough to warrant a trip to the glass-fronted cellar downstairs to look things over. The tiered outdoor terrace fills up fast in summer, and the service is the kind that notices without hovering.

Fine dining inside the Almhof Schneider, a storied alpine hotel a short walk from the Schlegelkopf piste, open only when the snow is down. The two rooms tell you where you are: one designed by artist Paul Renner, the other lined with woodcuts by Christian Thanhäuser. The menu runs Austrian classics alongside international detours, and the wine list clears 1,200 labels, which is a lot of labels.

The stone-vaulted ceiling of this old town-center restaurant sets a mood that the menu refuses to match, in the best possible way. Contemporary dishes roam from Asian noodle salads to Mediterranean pasta to a port-sauced roast beef, and the Kaiserschmarrn has apparently achieved local legend status. The hostess runs the room with warmth and a personal philosophy stitched right onto her apron, which really does say it all.

A modern dining room inside a small boutique hotel in Seefeld, where the open kitchen is part of the view from the right table. The menu takes classic European cooking and nudges it somewhere alpine, pulling in local fish and regional produce without making a fuss about it. The chef and the front-of-house team share the floor, and Austrian wines anchor the list. Three set menus or à la carte, so you can commit as much as the evening calls for.

Gogosch is a local word for rooster, which tells you something about how deeply this farm-to-table restaurant is rooted in Burgenland. It sits inside the Bio-Landgut Esterhazy estate, inside a converted stable with exposed beams and a terrace that earns its reputation. The kitchen keeps things unfussy but considered, leaning on organic and regional produce for dishes like venison carpaccio and baked schnitzel.

A tiled oven, timber ceiling, and brick vaulting set the scene at this restaurant inside a centuries-old inn turned boutique hotel in central Gmunden. The kitchen runs from regional Austrian classics to what the menu calls Alpine sushi, with a fine dining option in the evenings. The courtyard terrace is pretty enough to make you linger, and the wine list leans heavily, and sensibly, toward Austria.

Low ceilings, a lot of wood, and a wine list running to 600 bottles greet you at this farm-to-table restaurant tucked inside what feels like it's been around forever. The kitchen follows the market, so the menu shifts, but the cooking runs toward classic Austrian territory. In summer, the terrace pulls most of the room outside. The staff manage the trick of being present without hovering, which is harder than it sounds.

The large central bar is the room's center of gravity, and the dimmed lighting makes it easy to pretend you're in Dubai rather than the Austrian Alps. Zuma is a globally travelled Japanese-international restaurant with a robata grill, an extensive sushi menu, and cocktails that arrive before you've properly sat down. The English-speaking staff handle the après-ski crowd with practiced ease in a setting that feels considerably more sleek than cozy.

A handwritten menu is the first signal that this is a family-run Austrian restaurant doing things the old-fashioned way, and four generations in, no one seems tempted to change that. Veal liver, schnitzel, and pan-fried Arctic char with celeriac cream share the page alongside estate wines from Burgenland. In summer, a gravel courtyard shaded by old trees fills up fast, and fairly so.

A 500-year-old building on the market square, its historical walls kept intact through a careful renovation that gave everything an upscale, inviting finish, plus a terrace that earns its own visit. This is a proper sit-down restaurant where the chef runs a tight seasonal menu of Austrian classics with a modern lean. The wine list skews heavily local, with natural wines alongside the usual suspects.

A rotating oven anchors the dining room of this Neapolitan pizza spot on the ground floor of a stately Vienna hotel. The kitchen turns out properly charred, contemporary-leaning pies with a pronounced crust, alongside a long menu of pasta for anyone whose loyalty wavers. The bar counter with stools is made for an aperitif, and Italian wines keep things appropriately themed. Listed in 50 Top Pizza Europe's Excellent Pizzerias.

Roman-style pizza in Vienna's seventh district, where the dough is long-fermented and hydrated enough to make Neapolitan purists quietly nervous. The kitchen pairs each pizza with a cocktail, which sounds gimmicky until it doesn't. Fried starters, including supplì, come first, and the room keeps things low-key and unhurried. It reads like something transplanted from a fashionable Milan side street, which is more or less the point.