Vienna Dispatch: A Tale of Tiny Sandwiches (A Love Story)

Leave it to the Viennese to take the sometimes unweildy and occasionally messy sandwich and turn it into something logical, neat, and elegant. Behold the tiny topless sandwich:

These sandwiches are pure genius, and I am completely obsessed with them. It all started the day we got into Vienna, and I saw this storefront:

 I later found out that the name of this place is in fact  "Duran," not "Duran Duran," but my mistaken (and perhaps sleep deprived) initial assumption that it was somehow named after the 80s pop band is what first drew me in - but it was the sandwiches that hooked me. Small and composed pieces of perfection - eiersalat (egg salad), Camembert, thonfisch (tuna fish), gherkin - these bites of goodness are seriously addictive:

Once Poppa Trix and I had eaten what we thought was our fill, we headed out, only to discover - right next door - Trzesniewski, the granddaddy of all tiny sanwich shops. Here, the aesthetic is somewhat different than at Duran. Rather than carefully placing the sandwich elements on half-moon slices of baguette, the various salads and spreads are neat, uniform, geometric compositions on perfectly rectangular pieces of bread. Stuffed as we were, we couldn't resist getting a few to go. We chose sardine with egg, crab salad, and salmon with a creamy horseradish cheese:

As it turns out, this Trzesniewski was only a small outpost of the original, located near the Stephensdom at Stephensplatz, so of course a pilgrimage was in order.

It exceeded all of our hopes. This place is tiny sandwich nirvana. Paprika, champignon, zweibel (onion), tomaten ... how to choose from all the wondrous spreads? 

And who can resist a cute little beer (ein pfiff) to go with the mini sandwiches? Not me, that's for sure!

Poppa Trix and I just couldn't get enough, so one Sunday night - when just about everything in the city was closed -  we created our very own tiny Trzesniewski-style sandwiches with spreads from our local Billa supermarket:

I even bought a German-language brotaufstriche (spreads) cookbook:

Do I read German? Nope. But where there's a will, there's a way. I definitely plan to post some recipes for these lovely little sandwiches in the future ... I just can't live without them.