“Wilkommen, welcome,” says the smiling doorman as my sleek, black Mercedes stops outside legendary Hotel Sacher and he steps forward to open the door and greet us. The hotel had dispatched the car to meet me at Vienna International Airport and whisk me to the Austrian capital”™s famed hostelry. The driver has maneuvered around the city during Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic as if he were driving nothing bigger than a Vespa and now there we are, entering the hallowed portals of Vienna”™s best-known hotel, one of the great “grande dame” hotels of Europe.
Facing the Vienna State Opera House, just 100 yards from the city”™s monumental Albertina museum and a hop, skip and jump from Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi”™s former residence, the hotel was founded in 1876 by Eduard Sacher ”“ son of Franz Sacher, of Sachertorte fame ”“ upon whose death it passed to his wife, Anna. With a habitual cigar in her mouth and followed always by her entourage of French bulldogs, Frau Sacher”™s eccentricity merely added to the hotel”™s exclusivity and cachet, which it has retained and consolidated through the years. This is an address that visiting royalty, heads of state, Hollywood actors and shedloads of assorted A-listers have always been glad to call home when spending time in what is arguably Europe”™s most dazzling capital city.
But Hotel Sacher, as I was to discover, is so much more than its history, so much more than its Sachertorte ”“ the curious, apricot jam-infused chocolate cake confection, which crops up not just in Hotel Sacher at every opportunity but also in its adjoining café and, indeed, in ersatz rip-offs all over the city. Looking glorious after a recent face-lift, Hotel Sacher”™s public rooms astound with carved wood, gilt, marble and rich brocades, and the hotel feels as fresh today as it must have done the day it originally opened.
Guest rooms and suites are magnificent, displaying the most vibrant fabrics, and bathrooms are vast, with marble in the softest hues, gleaming faucets and sparkling mirrors. Windows open on to views of the Opera House and beyond, and the energy of this impossibly glamorous, ineffably grand, outrageously theatrical city, packed with wedding-cake castles and palaces and with music always its heart, seems to course easily through Hotel Sacher”™s high-born, aristocratic veins.
From a pummeling or peeling in the marvelous hotel spa, to breakfast in the great Marble Hall (to the accompaniment of Mozart”™s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550), to cocktails in the hotel”™s opulent Blue Bar ”“ a riot of gilt and deep-blue flocked wallpaper ”“ Hotel Sacher has it all. And like the Blue Bar, the intimate Red Bar positively drips with chandeliers and fin de siècle elegance, just the spot for a blow-out dinner of goose liver pâté, calf”™s head with truffle, venison with ox heart or a Wiener schnitzel the size of a soccer pitch. On the one hand, you are stepping back into a former age ”“ receptionists in frock coats; a pianist in white-tie and tails playing Chopin and Liszt. On the other, you are staying somewhere bang up to date ”“ the latest in-room technology and thoroughly clued-in hotel concierges producing impossible-to-get concert tickets at the drop of a well-loaded credit card. Make no mistake, there is nowhere quite like Hotel Sacher.
Then again, you have choices in Vienna, since the Austrian capital these days is hardly short of great hotels.
One notable newbie is the 90-room Hotel Motto, occupying a ravishing Renaissance mansion on Mariahilfer Straßer in the thumping heart of downtown. Describing itself as having “a touch of Japanese purism,” a hint of “Scandinavian coziness” and a “whole lot of French flair” (cue chandeliers originally from the Hotel Ritz in Paris, recently bought at auction), this is the hotel for guests who appreciate architectural detail and ornamental design ”“ baroque flourishes on the building”™s façade, a sensational brass staircase lovingly restored, commode sinks, decorative rugs and chinoiserie fabric-covered wardrobe doors ”“ but equally are looking for a totally laid-back, dress-down, anything-goes kind of vibe. With super-comfortable beds, parquet floors, retro Roberts radios, walk-in rain-showers and alluring St. Charles Pharmacy natural products, guest rooms are welcoming and gemütlich as well as unthreateningly stylish.
But for my money, the most exciting thing about Motto, and reason enough alone to stay there, is its seventh-floor restaurant, Chez Bernard, the beating heart of the hotel. Talk about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon: With its baskets of ferns and foliage above the gorgeous oval bar, which looks like a beautiful spaceship landed on the parquet floor, this is a brilliant space, with a terrific comfort-food menu at lunch and dinner (saffron risotto, coq au vin) and a breakfast menu that ticks every hipster seed-box ”“ organic soft-boiled eggs with homemade nougat cream jam, say, and avocado toast with lemon and harissa flakes, to name but two. And then there are the breads and viennoiserie ”“ all superb, as you”™d expect, in the city that gave its name to the art of breakfast baked goods ”“ all available for purchase, too, from the ground-floor Motto Brot boulangerie and patisserie.
“I don”™t care what the question is,” as a culinary wag once observed, “but bread is always the answer.” Never was that truer than at Hotel Motto ”“ and in, as the song says, “Wien, Wien, nur du allein” ”“ “Vienna, Vienna, only you alone.”
For more, visit sacher.com and hotelmotto.at.
