Café Demel Vienna: Menu, Prices and the Queue

Demel's café menu is long, but most people order one of three desserts. We tried the Kaiserschmarrn and the apple strudel.

• Kaiserschmarrn (€12.90): what Demel is famous for. An egg and milk batter is cooked in a pan, torn into pieces and caramelised, then dusted with icing sugar and served with plum compote (Zwetschkenröster).
• Demel's Sachertorte (€8.50): served with whipped cream (mit Schlag). This is Demel's own recipe.
• Apple strudel (€9.50): apple filling in paper-thin pastry, with vanilla sauce.
• Other choices: Dukatenbuchteln (small yeast buns with vanilla sauce, €12.50), the flourless Fragilité (€9.90) and the cakes of the day from the display (€7.90).

If you do not want something sweet, the menu also has savoury dishes: beef broth (Rindssuppe), Backhendl (fried chicken) with potato salad, and beef goulash (official menu, October 2026). For coffee there are the Viennese classics: Melange (€6.90), Einspänner (€8.50), Franziskaner (€8.50) and Demel's hot chocolate (€8.50).

Kaiserschmarrn is Austria's shredded pancake: a thick batter of flour, eggs, milk, sugar and butter that is torn apart in the pan as it cooks, so the edges caramelise. It is dusted with icing sugar and served with plum or apple compote.

The name means something like "the emperor's mess": Kaiser is emperor, and Schmarrn is something torn up and jumbled. It is pronounced roughly KY-zer-shmarn.

In the video we told the two stories about where the name comes from; nobody knows which one is true:

• Emperor Franz Joseph is a guest at a farmer's house. The nervous host tears the pancake apart in the pan, covers it with icing sugar to hide the mess and serves it with jam. The emperor loves it, and it goes into the palace kitchen.
• In the palace kitchen the dessert falls apart as it is served. Empress Sisi does not like how it looks, and Franz Joseph says: "Bring it here, I will eat it."

Is there alcohol in it? On Demel's menu the Kaiserschmarrn is listed with plum compote and no alcohol is mentioned; there is no meat in it. Some recipes soak the raisins in rum, so if you want to be sure, ask when you order.

A dessert and a coffee come to about €15-20 per person: a Kaiserschmarrn (€12.90) or an apple strudel (€9.50) with a Melange (€6.90), according to the menu in our video. We paid €37 for one Kaiserschmarrn, one apple strudel, a coffee and a water. Vienna is expensive; plan for it when you stop for cake.

Demel does not take reservations (official info, October 2026); you queue for the café. We got a table after waiting about half an hour.

• If you do not want to queue: buy Kaiserschmarrn at the takeaway window by the entrance, in a small 150 g or a large 250 g portion. The same window sells coffee and hot chocolate.

Demel's website does not list prices; the prices below are from the menu we were given in our video. Prices can change over time.

Demel's most photographed corner is the glass window on Kohlmarkt: inside, cooks make Kaiserschmarrn in wide pans while the crowd on the pavement watches. Inside there are shop rooms, a model of St.

Stephen's Cathedral made of gingerbread, a display of candied violets (Veilchen) and tiered cakes; the café salons have marble tables, red velvet armchairs, chandeliers and a portrait of Franz Joseph on the wall.

Both sell Sachertorte, but it is not the same cake. The name "Original Sacher-Torte" belongs to the Hotel Sacher, and the two houses spent years in court over it. Demel serves its own recipe as "Demel's Sachertorte", with whipped cream (€8.50).

Our advice: try Sachertorte at either one, but have the Kaiserschmarrn at Demel; the reason to go to Demel is the Kaiserschmarrn and the kitchen in the window.

The address is Kohlmarkt 14, 1010 Wien. Kohlmarkt is the short street of luxury shops that runs from the Graben down to the Michaelertor gate of the Hofburg, and Demel is at the palace end.

The nearest metro is U3 Herrengasse; from St. Stephen's Cathedral it is an easy walk along the Graben. If you visit the Hofburg, the National Library or the Spanish Riding School, it is on your way for a cake break.

Demel is open every day, Sundays included, 10:00-19:00 (official info, October 2026). We went in the late afternoon: there was a queue at the door and we waited half an hour; when we sat down it was 18:53 and the café closed at 19:00.

To sit in peace, join the queue at least an hour before closing. If you do not want to wait, you can buy Kaiserschmarrn at the takeaway window while it is open.

Demel has been open since 1786 (official info). Its full name is K. u. K. Hofzuckerbäcker Ch. Demel's Söhne; "k. u. k. Hofzuckerbäcker" means imperial and royal court confectioner, so Demel supplied sweets to the Habsburg court. That is why it sits right across from the palace.

For dinner the same day, try Tafelspitz at Plachutta Wollzeile , and for coffee and apple strudel Café Landtmann , both places we went to. Everything we ate in Vienna is in our guide to what to eat in Vienna , and the rest of the trip in our Vienna travel guide .

If you stay in the Innere Stadt you can walk to Demel: See Innere Stadt hotels  Ad. Ad Areas and the hotels we stayed at are in our where to stay in Vienna  guide.