Zum Schwarzen Kameel

Here it is — Zum Schwarzen Kameel, 'The Black Camel,' on the Bognergasse. And the number to hold onto is sixteen eighteen. That's the year a spice merchant opened a shop under this very name, which makes it one of the oldest continuously trading food houses in all of Vienna — four hundred years and counting. Beethoven, who lived just up the street for a while, sent out to this shop for his groceries.

A gentle caution for your eyes, though: the jewel-box interior, all polished panelling and Art Nouveau fittings, is not four centuries old — that dates from around nineteen hundred, the age of elegant Viennese design. But the business beneath it really does run back to sixteen eighteen.

What we've come for is the counter at the front. Here, standing up, the Viennese eat Brötchen — small, beautiful open-faced bites of bread, topped with cured meats, smoked salmon, egg, a dab of something sharp. You pick a few from the display, you eat them on your feet with a glass of wine, and you move on. Think of it as fast food with a four-hundred-year pedigree — the refined, aristocratic cousin of the street food we're building toward. In Vienna even a quick bite has centuries behind it.

Pick up a Brötchen or two if you'd like, then step back out and carry on east. We're heading for the oldest square in the whole city — a place where the Romans once built a forum.