Fine-dining lane

Slow your step for a moment here, in this quiet lane just off the Kärntner Straße. There's nothing dramatic to point at — no golden dome, no four-hundred-year-old sign — and that is rather the point. Hidden along discreet streets like this one, behind plain doors and small brass plates, are some of the finest restaurants in Vienna: the city's Michelin-starred tables.

We've eaten very well already — imperial pastry, a four-century deli counter, a sausage stand, a record-breaking schnitzel. This is the top of that range, the fine-dining tier that the best of Vienna's kitchens occupy today. And something interesting is happening in them. Alongside the grand old classics, a newer generation of chefs is cooking what people call the New Vienna cuisine — lighter, seasonal, built on Austrian produce and regional ingredients, taking the heavy imperial dishes and reinventing them with a modern touch.

I'm deliberately not naming a single restaurant, and here's why: this is the one part of Vienna's food world that genuinely changes. A great old coffeehouse will outlive us all, but this year's brilliant new table might move, or close, or lose its chef. So the current names and the details live in this tour's written notes, where we can keep them fresh — have a look there, and book ahead if you'd like to splurge. Just know that the very top of Viennese cooking is hiding in plain sight, all around you, on streets exactly like this.

Carry on downhill now, toward the grand old Opera house at the bottom — and the most famous cake in the city.