Restaurant review: Schillinger’s Swing Kitchen

Schillinger’s Swing Kitchen was a consistently good source of top-notch vegan food during a recent European train trip, with a sufficiently varied menu to ensure that we returned to refuel on several occasions across a couple of different Austrian cities.

Started in January 2015, Schillinger’s Swing Kitchen now has six Austrian branches, plus two in Berlin, Germany, and one in Bern, Switzerland, all with the same well-produced menu of fast food wraps and burgers, salads, and desserts. If ever a vegan chain were set to rival similar omnivore businesses, this place would be it.

The company is owned by the Schillinger family. Charly, whose family background is in the restaurant trade, worked for years in the financial industry, and turned vegan 20 years ago, and his wife Irene had a vision to recreate the flavours of traditional Austrian dishes in a plant-based menu, and this is reflected, for example, in their Schnitzel burger, and in an almond cake with chocolate-pudding cream topped with a nougat-icing and decorated with chocolate and almond-nougat balls. After the existing family business, the Gasthaus Schillinger established in 1793, successfully turned vegan, they began their Swing Kitchen, hoping to present environmentally-friendly burgers and other fast food to the masses.

And that’s exactly what they are doing. We visited the Opernring branch in Vienna, and later became serial customers at the newly-opened franchise in Graz. Between us we tried four of the seven types of burgers – honestly, they were all good and a preference would purely be based on individual taste – the Swiss wrap, which was my personal go-to meal almost every time, with its mix of hash browns and hot cauliflower, and, when we were in need of more vegetables and less fried food, the Nugget salad. The garlic dip was amazing, especially with the French fries. The meal deals worked out at around 10 Euros each and included a drink.

And all this delicious food was served in a crisp clean environment to a soundtrack of 1930s and 40s jazz/swing. Branches all have a live display above the counter of resources saved compared to a similar meat burger restaurant. Not sure how that works, but maybe it simply shows a heart in the right place, for a company that uses no plastics, Fairtrade ingredients only, and boasts that its foods all have 0% cholesterol.

We’ll be back.