THE GOSSIPING GOURMET: From schnitzel to strudel to breakfast

Looking for a nice home-style dinner in a very casual environment? Cafe Vienna, known to Lagunans for its coffee and pastries as well as a place for hearty breakfasts and tasty lunches, is now serving dinner.

There is no signage advertising dinner, so you just have to be in the know. The Craftsman-style building in South Laguna on South Coast Highway features outdoor seating off the parking lot, a covered patio and a small dining room.

We preferred to eat indoors because of the traffic noise from South Coast Highway. There is not much atmosphere, but they do have linen tablecloths and napkins as well as candles (which they don’t seem to light).

The attraction here is the food. There is an eclectic menu that emphasizes Viennese specialties, served in a simple, unpretentious style. In addition to appetizers and entrees, they serve salads and panini from their lunch menu, but most unusual is that you can get breakfast until 9 p.m.

There is a special menu category called Breakfast For Dinner, which features such items as their great veal sausages with scrambled eggs and roasted potatoes.

With our menus came some homemade warm whole-grain wheat berry bread, a nice change from the usual cottony white French bread that is served in so many casual eateries.

Novel among the appetizers is cheese schnitzel, which is breaded and fried Swiss cheese with balsamic marinated strawberries and tartar sauce.

They also have a unique take on potato pancakes. These have chopped, sautéed veal sausage in the potato pancakes, and they’re served with applesauce, sour cream and mustard.

We ordered the shrimp bowl that was unlike any preparation we had ever tasted. We genuinely enjoyed the garlic infused, warm balsamic sauce that covered the grilled shrimp.

The shrimp were a tad overcooked, but we were glad that we had ordered a side of their very good homemade spaetzle to soak up the slightly sweet and savory sauce.

These tasty little noodle-shaped dumplings accompany several of their entrées. They were particularly nice because their texture was slightly chewy. Spaetzle frequently tastes like mush in this country.

Another classic Viennese side dish that also comes with some of the entrées is braised red cabbage. Their version is simply terrific. Often it’s cloyingly sweet or overcooked. This cabbage retained a little crunch, and its balance of sweet and sour was perfect.

Terry loves wiener schnitzel, a thin breaded veal scallop. She had recently eaten it at Wolfgang Puck’s famous Spago in Beverly Hills, where a small section of his menu is devoted to dishes his mother made. But truth be told, his mother’s schnitzel was not as good as chef Ferdinand Lettner’s of Cafe Vienna. His version outshines Spago’s.

The meat was pounded until thin and tender, then fried until the well-seasoned crust was very crispy. It was also not the least bit greasy. Our one complaint is that the accompanying roasted potatoes were too soft with hardly any crust (which we think is the best part.)

There is a rack of lamb and beef stroganoff for the meat eaters, seafood linguine, capellini with grilled chicken in sun-dried tomato pesto sauce, and spinach and cheese ravioli for the pasta lovers. Chicken breasts appear in two guises, either stuffed with prosciutto and cheese or grilled in creamy mushroom sauce.

On the lighter side is a chicken breast salad with a warm, balsamic vinaigrette. The moist chicken breast has been nicely marinated in lemon and spices. We had this same chicken on their Mediterranean salad with onions, olives and feta cheese. You can also get grilled panini sandwiches, a veggie burger and those unique Breakfast For Dinner entrees.

For dessert, selections include a chocolate nut brownie served with caramel sauce, whipped cream and berries, marinated fruit and berries topped with whipped cream and served with a “Vienna” cookie.

On this particular evening, there were only berries and no discernible marinade. The cookie was an undercooked puff pastry palmier, topped with too much powdered sugar.

We were really looking forward to the apple strudel because he had done so well with classic Viennese specialties and the cafe is also a bakery. Both of our grandmothers made apple strudel. We discovered that we shared fond memories of a large kitchen table covered with one magically thin pastry sheet, hanging over the edges, slowly stretched gradually from a lump of dough.

It was then rolled around a filling of apples, raisins and nuts, creating a multilayered confection. The cinnamon-y smell that pervaded the kitchen never failed to make us hungry, and that first, almost too warm bite as it came from the oven was a bit of heaven.

Although he surpassed Wolfgang’s mother with his schnitzel, the chef’s strudel couldn’t begin to compete with our grandmother’s. The dough was very thick, undercooked on the bottom and heavy everywhere else, and the apple filling was humdrum. Unfortunately, the serving was gargantuan. It was surprising, since the pastries at Cafe Vienna are generally quite good.

Maybe we should have chosen their lo-carb vanilla cheesecake brulee with a dark chocolate crust. Since it is sugar-free and has only three net carbs per slice, it sounds like a guilt-free pleasure.

The menu has a lot of variety — including some tasty dishes that are served nowhere else in town — and the prices are extremely reasonable.