Hello and Servus!
It is spring 2023, and I’m in Vienna, the capital city of Austria.
A city that is famous for its coffee houses and cafés, its cakes and its pastries.
So what sort of person comes here and then goes to a Czech burger chain?
Welcome to the model railway restaurant!
We’ve come to the Vienna branch of "Výtopna",
a small Czech burger chain
where your food and drinks are delivered to your table by model railway.
This might just be the greatest restaurant I’ve ever been to.
And we haven’t even sat down yet!
The first Výtopna opened in the Czech city of Brno back in 2009,
but unfortunately that one has now closed,
so we came here instead.
But it’s exactly the same concept:
they call it "meat and beer on rails".
- This is very good.
- [Andrew] Very good indeed.
Very good.
So how exactly does it work?
Well, in many ways, just like a normal restaurant.
A member of staff comes to your table, takes your order,
and a few minutes later your food and drink arrive.
- Oh it's yours! Oh my word.
- [Andrew] I like how it crawls slowly into the station...
- [Waitress] Mahlzeit - enjoy your meal!
- [Tim] Danke!
By the way, it’s not just meat and beer that come along the rails here,
they also have vegetarian options,
as well as a large selection of non-alcoholic beverages.
Frankly, they’ve missed a golden opportunity to open a salad bar instead
and call it Leaves On The Line.
But of course, the main reason you come here is the model trains.
The restaurant make all of the models themselves,
and although there are only a few trains running about at the moment
(possibly because we’ve come here on a quiet midweek lunchtime),
they have a big display of historic locomotives at the back of the room
and I guess maybe these ones come out on special occasions.
But more about the trains in a moment: is the food actually any good?
Well, Andrew’s already finished his.
- [Tim] Was it good?
- It was the best meal I’ve ever had in Austria.
Definitely.
- [Tim] Wow.
How many meals have you had in Austria?
More than one right?
- This is the best one.
For sure.
Right, I don’t think this is going to be a food channel any time soon.
But the burgers were pretty good.
Anyway. Back to the trains!
When you’ve finished your meal, another train comes down the track,
you load your empty glass or plate onto the trucks,
wave it goodbye, and off it goes -
all the way down the side of the restaurant,
and all the way along the back,
until eventually it arrives back where it started in the kitchen.
The system is controlled by computer,
and in theory, all the staff really have to do
is load the train with the correct food and drink
and then tell the software which table it needs to travel to.
In practise though...
the people who work here have to be on constant alert
because the miniature trains keep having miniature accidents.
This is probably the only waitering job in the world
where you also have to be an expert in railway salvage operations.
Having said that though, this is not the only model railway restaurant in the world;
you can find similar places in Budapest and Chicago,
and Vytopna themselves have another branch in Prague;
and if you’re ever in the eastern Czech town of Orlová,
they have an outdoor one,
which used to belong to the Vytopna chain as well,
but now it seems to operate independently.
(I don’t know what happened there.)
Anyway, if you know any other model railway restaurants out there that I haven’t mentioned
please do tell us about them in the comments.
But if you’d like to visit this one in Vienna,
you’ll find it next to Naschmarkt,
just to the south of the city centre,
between the metro stations at Karlsplatz and Kettenbrückegasse.
And you should expect to pay about 15€ for a burger and about €5 for a pint
(depending of course on what exactly you’re ordering.)
The restaurant is completely step free and wheelchair accessible,
and it’s also a great place to bring your kids,
whether they are 5, or 55.
And as always, thank you very much for watching
and I’ll see you soon.