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Where in Vienna can you go for a cheap meal?

Even on a tight budget, you can enjoy a nice meal at many of Vienna's restaurants. From local delights to international treats, here are some budget-friendly places worth checking out.

Published: 7 June 2024 10:48 CEST

Where in Vienna can you go for a cheap meal?

Woman eating an healthy salad with a juice. Photo by Farhad Ibrahimzade on Unsplash

Vienna offers a wide range of different restaurants, even if you are on a budget.

In most parts of the city, you can find affordable eats, including everything from local cuisine and Turkish treats to vegetarian dishes and Pakistani curries.

Here, we list some places where you can go to enjoy food at affordable prices.

Der Wiener Deewan

Der Wiener Deewan is a popular Pakistani restaurant known for its pay-what-you-want concept.

The restaurant offers a buffet with a variety of both vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes. Typical items on the menu include naan, chicken curry, vegetable curry, dal, biryani, and various salads.

Here, you can eat as much as you want and pay whatever you feel like.

The restaurant is located in Alsegrund and you can read more about it here.

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Brunnenmarkt

Brunnenmarkt in Ottakring is one of Vienna’s largest and most lively multicultural markets. It is the perfect place to visit if you want to enjoy a tasty and affordable meal.

Here, you can usually find eats such as falafel, döner, salads, sausages, burek, pastries, and flatbread with various fillings. The price of falafel typically ranges from €3 to €5.

If you visit the market just before closing and vendors still have food left, you might also get a discount.

In addition to the cheap food from the stalls, you can also take the opportunity to buy vegetables, fruits, spices, and even clothes, all at affordable prices.

Read more about Brunnenmarkt here.

Universities

Vienna’s universities offer affordable meals through their “Mensa” cafeterias, run by the Österreichische Mensenbetriebsgesellschaft.

The idea behind these Mensas is to offer students nutritious meals at an affordable price. Luckily, anyone can enjoy a meal there.

For a meal with a side salad or soup, you pay an average of €7. If you want to spend less, you can get a salad or soup for around €4.

The restaurants are spread across different university campuses in the city. If you want to visit one of the larger ones, you can go to Vienna’s Technical University or to the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Read more about the Mensas here.

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READ MORE: Is it OK to ask for a doggy bag in an Austrian restaurant?

Micheles Mensa

Michele’s Mensa is a great choice for students and anyone looking for a healthy and affordable meal in Vienna.

The restaurant offers two daily dishes: a vegetarian option and a meat option. You can also pay a little bit extra for a bowl of salad from the buffet or a bowl of the daily soup.

Most ingredients are organic, and the average price of a dish with a salad is €7.

The restaurant is also a great place to visit because it is located inside the historic and beautiful Academy of Fine Arts building.

Check out the menu here.

Hannovermarkt

Hannovermarkt is another multicultural market in Brigittenau. It is known for its many stalls selling everything from food to clothing.

Here, you can buy fresh vegetables and fruits and enjoy fast meal options such as falafel, burek, grilled sausages, and gyros.

If you are in the mood for gyros, the price is around €5 for one wrap.

Read more about the market here.

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Wurstelstand

Vienna’s Würstelstände (Sausage stalls) sell a variety of delicious snacks at affordable prices.

At the many stalls located all over the city, you can enjoy traditional Viennese sausages, cheese-filled Käsekrainer, or Bosna, a bratwurst with curry and mustard.

The average price for a sausage in bread with toppings is €4.

READ ALSO: Seven ‘weird’ foods in Austria you need to try at least once

Centimeter

Centimeter is a popular restaurant chain in Vienna known for its generous portions and affordable prices.

Here, you can enjoy a variety of traditional Austrian dishes, including schnitzel, goulash, and strudel.

The daily dish costs around €9. A schnitzel costs about €15, but the generous portion size may allow you to save some for your next meal.

Check out the menu here.

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Other ways of enjoying affordable meals

In Austria, most restaurants offer a special lunch menu at a discounted price, often including a main dish and a starter. This offer typically runs from 12 pm to 3 pm in most restaurants.

If you want to eat at a restaurant to a discounted price no matter the hour, you can use the application “The Fork”. Many Viennese restaurants are affiliated with the application, and by reserving a table through the app, you can often receive a discount of about 20 percent off the food bill.

The Fork is easy to use. With the search filter, you can select cuisines, locations, and times of your visits.

Learn more about The Fork here.

READ NEXT: The apps and discounts to help you save money when eating out in Vienna

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Could be wurst: Vienna sausage stands push for UN recognition

The owners of 15 stands in the Austrian capital have formed a lobbying group and applied last week to have the “Vienna sausage stand culture” inscribed as intangible cultural heritage by the UN agency.

“We want to create a kind of quality seal for Vienna sausage stands,” said 36-year-old Patrick Tondl, one of the association’s founders whose family owns Leo’s Wuerstelstand — Vienna’s oldest operating sausage stand.

“At the sausage stand, everyone is the same… No matter if you’re a top banker who earns hundreds of thousands of euros or if you have to scrape together the last euros to buy a sausage… You meet here, you can talk to everyone,” he adds.

High inflation driving consumers looking for affordable meals, plus a new wave of vendors with updated flavours, have helped keep the stands busy.

Tondl’s great-grandfather started their business in the late 1920s, pulling a cart behind him and selling sausages at night.

The family’s customers have included former chancellor Bruno Kreisky, recalls Vera Tondl, 67, who runs the shop together with her son Patrick.

Leo’s is one of about 180 sausage stands in Vienna today, out of a total of about 300 food stands, selling fast food at fixed locations and open until the early hours, according to the city’s economic chamber.

Whereas the number of stands has remained similar over the last decade, more than a third have changed from selling sausages to kebabs, pizza and noodles, a spokesman for the chamber told AFP.

‘Momentum’

But sausage stands have seen a “mini boom” in customer numbers recently, according to Patrick Tondl.

Many have been drawn back to the stands by high inflation, where a meal can be had for less than 10 euros ($11) with lower overheads than restaurants.

New stand operators have also brought a “bit of momentum”, said Tondl, bringing the likes of organic vegetarian sausages with kimchi.

Tourists are already drawn in droves.

“When you come to Austria, it’s what you want to try,” 28-year-old Australian tourist Sam Bowden told AFP.

The cultural legacy of Vienna’s sausages is far-reaching, including the use of the term “wiener” for sausages in the United States, which is believed to have derived from the German name for Vienna, Wien.

However Sebastian Hackenschmidt, who has published a photo book on the stands, said the legacy of the “Vienna phenomena” is more complex.

He says that for many in multicultural Vienna, the sausage stands hold little appeal — equally for the growing number of vegetarians — and their universal appeal is something of a “myth”.

“Vienna is a city in great flux… With the influx of people, cultural customs are also changing,” Hackenschmidt told AFP.

Some 40 percent of Vienna’s two million inhabitants were born outside the country, where the anti-immigrant far-right looks set to top September national polls for the first time.

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