Yesterday, I shared a detailed review of my Austrian Airlines 777 flight from Vienna to Chicago. One distinctive of Austrian Airlines is its business class coffee menu, which it calls a “Vienna Coffee House above the clouds.” For coffee aficionados, the coffee menu alone may be worth a flight. Let’s take a closer at this delectable feature.
Coffee Menu On Austrian Airlines
While great coffee from Julius Meinl is available on most Austrian flight, a special coffee menu is available on longhaul flights in business class.
Historically, the menu included a history of the Vienna coffee culture and a wider range of choices:
The highlight of the menu is Eiskaffe, which is double espresso with with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. It is currently only available on flights departing from Vienna and is served in a beautiful tall glass.
This is not only a fabulous coffee, but a decadent dessert.
For inbound flights to Vienna, Einspänner is available, which is coffee with whipped cream.
Although not on the menu, cappuccino is available:
Served with Milka chocolate from Germany on a silver tray in a lovely gold-rimmed cup and matching saucer.
Lattes are also available:
But do try the Melange, which includes black coffee (instead of stronger espresso), hot milk, and foamed milk. It may look like another cappuccino, but has a unique and different taste (it is weaker, but brings out other flavors and if made correctly, is not overpowered by milk).
And of course you cannot go wrong with a straight cup of black coffee, which is available (along with Melange) on almost all Austrian flights in business class, even domestic flights.
CONCLUSION
The coffee is really something special on Austrian Airlines. If, like me, coffee is the way to your heart, do give Austrian Airlines business class a try. Even while other aspects of the overall business class experience may be lacking, the exquisite coffee onboard will always leave me with warm feelings toward Austrian.
I once saw a guy drinking a dessert coffee like that. He was wearing a t-shirt that said “Straight Outta Testosterone”.
Do they use bottled water or something similar for the purposes of making these coffee drinks? Or are they using the crap water stored in the airplane’s tanks?
I’m going to assume they do. We both know how essential good water is to make good coffee and you can generally tell if the water is not good.
Do you know how the filter coffee is made on board? I can’t imagine a stock coffee maker using the main water tank can make a flavorful cup, no matter how great the beans are.
I haven’t flown Austrian for years, but when I did I recall their coffee service being a cool novelty, but not actually good coffee. The affogato probably can’t go wrong – even crappy coffee poured over rich ice cream will taste good.
They use Vöslauer water I the cabins…hopefully in the coffee too.
I’ll ask them next time I fly Austrian. I use them fairly frequently on JFK/EWR-VIE route.
Does the ‘great coffee from JM’ include espresso? Whenever I fly LH in business class, I get annoyed that they can’t be bothered to install a €100 machine using Nespresso-compatible capsules (those retail for less than 20 eurocents each at Lidl/Aldi) on their aircraft.
(before anyone jumps in to tell me about what kind of coffee they drank on LH to /from New York or wherever, I should probably clarify that my comment relates to short-haul flights; I’ve only flown one intercontinental segment on Lufthansa, and that was a last-minute mileage redemption in F)
I’m glad you clarified, because I was going to say that LH does offer Nespresso on longhaul flights in J.
I was flying Austrian a couple years ago and I was always getting Maria Theresia coffee, because it was no milk or cream in it, but a nice dose of orange liqueur. Perfect as a coffee and a digestive ad well.