That Old World flavor
Julius Meinl Cafe re-creates a bit of Vienna on Southport
Avenue By Brenda Fowler. Brenda Fowler was a Vienna-based contributor to The New York Times from 1989 to 1992

Legend has it that coffee was introduced to Vienna in 1683, when the Ottoman Turks who had besieged the city pulled up their tent stakes and fled eastward, leaving behind bags of unroasted coffee beans that the Viennese at first took to be fodder for the camels.
By the end of the 19th Century, the city, then capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had become famous for its coffeehouses, enormous establishments with high vaulted ceilings, dark wood paneling and comfortable banquettes. Into these venerable cafes came well-heeled citizens to dine and savor the coffee.
In fin-de-siecle Vienna, the city's most glorious epoch, every illuminary had his own Stammcafe, a coffeehouse where he hung out regularly. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, was at home in the Cafe Landtmann; the exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky talked politics in the Cafe Central. Many people passed entire days in their Stammcafes, even taking afternoon naps and receiving mail there. But the primary occupation of those in the coffeehouses was newspaper reading. The newspapers, attached to little wicker frames that made them easy to hold, came from all over Europe.
Long before I first arrived in Vienna as a student in 1985, the two world wars had reduced Austria's empire to a smidgen of land in the eastern Alps. But many of the great coffeehouses of Vienna had survived, and it was there that my friends and I went to channel the charmed anguish of those turn-of-the-century artists and intellectuals.
We scribbled away in our journals, held up ancient editions of Nietzsche and Rainer Maria Rilke at prominent angles and breathed in the doomed air. Ah, the torn velvet upholstery! Ah, the smoke wafting up toward the dingy ceiling! Ah, the surly tuxedoed waiters, adding up the bill on narrow slips of paper, mumbling the sums in a curious Viennese dialect.
Even then, however, the most irresistible prospect of a visit to a coffeehouse was that first intoxicating sip of the strong, flavorful coffee, which arrived in a snow-white teacup on a silver platter with a small glass of tap water.
To my distress, no matter which brand of coffee, or machine or grinder I tried, I could never achieve the taste of Vienna's coffee in Chicago. When I saw that Julius Meinl, the premier coffee roaster in Austria, had opened its first American coffeehouse in the Lake View neighborhood of Chicago, I wondered whether the company could succeed in re-creating the bohemian atmosphere of Vienna just blocks away from Wrigley Field at 3601 N. Southport Ave. Even more important, could it make coffee that tastes like it does there?
The day I visited Julius Meinl, the 70-seat cafe was packed. At the front, a line of customers waited patiently to order from the counter, which was loaded with pastries and bread selections with names like Salzstangerl, a salt-covered roll; Topfengolatsche, a Danish with a cream cheese-like filling, and Esterhazytorte, a hazelnut flour cake layered with praline butter cream.
The tables-for-two were filled with smiling couples exchanging forkfuls of Apfelstrudel and apricot roulade. Near the door, a group of four women and four 1-year-olds had installed themselves in banquettes, and one flapped his hands as he got his first taste of real whipped cream.

"What can I get for you?" a friendly young waitress asked one pair.

It was all so very un-Viennese. The clients were not angst-ridden, the service much too obliging. There wasn't even any smoke in the air.
"You're speaking to the wrong person," said Thomas Meinl, laughing a little. "I am an avid, militant, intolerant anti-smoker." He represents the fourth Meinl generation in the family business and flew in from Vienna to help open the coffeehouse.
The furnishings, designed in Austria, were right on. The tabletops were white marble, the banquettes upholstered in traditional gold, green and red patterns and the ceiling hung with the globe lights that are ubiquitous in Viennese cafes. At the back, a row of local, national and international newspapers, including the racy Austrian tabloid Neue Kronen Zeitung, hung neatly on their wicker frames, just like in Vienna.
Tom Meinl, Thomas Meinl's son, and the fifth generation in the family business, confirmed my suspicion that the main obstacle to re-creating the perfect cup of Viennese coffee is Chicago's water. In Vienna, he said, the water comes from the lower Alps, where the chalk formation of the mountains meets the sandy soil of the eastern Austrian plains. "This geological composition is great for drinking water," said the younger Meinl. The minerals, he said, act as a catalyst to transfer just the right amount of oils and flavor from the coffee to the water. What's more, it's unchlorinated.

Chicago's water, which comes from Lake Michigan and is relatively low in mineral content, is treated with chlorine to kill bacteria. To eliminate the chlorine taste, the Meinls installed a water filter.

Christian Glueck, the handsome, sandy-haired Austrian who trained the American staff, said that not just the quality of the water, but its temperature, the fineness of the grind and how tightly the coffee is packed into the espresso maker all have to be precisely in sync to produce an excellent brew.
"There are so many things," said Glueck. "It's like wine."
Glueck had the staff prepare a melange, the classic Viennese coffee with one shot of espresso, the same amount of hot water and steamed milk, and then he set it on one of the high tables like a centerpiece.
"First, look at the foam on top," he commanded.
It did not, like some cheap froth on hot chocolate, tower above the cup, concealing the coffee underneath. Neither had it dissolved into the coffee. It clung just below the rim of the cup, allowing a bit of coffee to creep out along the sides, yielding an abstract design in the foam.
Glueck next took a tiny spoon, inserted it along the inside of the cup and pushed back the foam.
"You see it, you see it?" he asked with the surety of a believer.
I bent my head in and stared into the creamy brown mixture. It was neither too watery, nor flecked with grounds.
"Now taste."
I raised the cup to my lips and let the foam and coffee run together into my mouth. It was Vienna all over again.

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