This page here is a slippery slope, folks. It’s brimming with all kinds of useful and useless details and stories about Schweizerhaus with the sole purpose of turning you into the pub’s know-it-all. If you’d rather not be that person in the bar, do not read on. Consider yourself warned.
In the 1920s, Karl Kolarik was determined to get the Viennese to take to fried fish. Rule number 1 when frying: get the oil hot. To make sure the oil was ready for rule 1, one of the cooks would always toss a piece of a potato into the oil. At some point boss Karl Kolarik suggested cutting the potatoes a little thinner as they’d reduce food waste and still know if the oil was hot enough. Well, that economically-driven edict gave birth to an invention that the Viennese couldn’t get enough of — and still can’t: the Original Schweizerhaus chips.
To get the perfect amount of head on a glass of Schweizerhaus beer, we developed a special glass, the so-called Schweizerhaus-Bunkerl. The beer is tapped in three stages: “pre-pour, re-pour, finishing.” The process takes about 3 to 6 minutes, during which time the beer can warm up a bit from its storage temperature of 4 degrees and reduce the carbonic acid content. This makes our quaffable beer go down so smoothly.
After the end of the Second World War, Schweizerhaus was razed to the ground. But Karl Kolarik and his wife Else were undeterred. The first thing the pair did to bring Schweizerhaus back was buy an old Ferris wheel car and serve beer to thirsty patrons through the window.
If you like creating or trying something new you’re bound to have your fair share of failures. One of our tastiest failures was the automatic sausage dispenser, which let guests at Schweizerhaus crank out their own warm sausage in 1928. Unfortunately, it was not a hit and the sausage-o-mat disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared.
Schweizerhaus has also fell victim to some curious fake news. In 1991, a prankster started spreading the rumor that Schweizerhaus had been sold to a well-known fast-food giant. The news spread so quickly, we had to deny it in advertisements.
In 1974, a very special patent was registered: the Radimat. With the help of this ingenious slicer, you can cut radishes into a wafer-thin spirals at lightning speed. This spinning wonder of slicing technology just had to be invented next door to Vienna’s favorite amusement park. To this day, you can still see the original at Schweizerhaus!
Celebrities have always enjoyed mingling with Schweizerhaus patrons. Our list of famous guests is long, ranging from Franz Grillparzer to Arthur Schnitzler, who ate fried chicken with Hugo von Hofmannsthal at Schweizerhaus, to Anton Bruckner and his arch-rival Johannes Brahms.
Maxi Böhm, Johannes Heesters, Luise Martini, Curd Jürgens, Heinz Conrads, Helmut Qualtinger, Peter Alexander, Otto Waalkes or the unforgettable Udo Jürgens. Many of the names may no longer mean anything to the younger generation. But we all have fond memories of them.
If you keep your eyes peeled whilst walking through the beer garden, you’re bound to see someone well-known from sports, politics, art and culture. Why? Simple, even celebrities are human and humans like drinking beer in a shady beer garden and munching on a crispy pork knuckle with friends or family. That’s just a fact.
