Why Mraz & Sohn matters.
Mraz & Sohn is a two-MICHELIN-starred Austrian fine-dining restaurant where Brigittenau's working-class culinary heritage meets the Mraz family's multigenerational hospitality tradition, Lukas Mraz's unconventional approach to contemporary gastronomy and one of Vienna's most inventive kitchens.
Set along Wallensteinstraße near Rauscherstraße and a short walk from Hannovermarkt, the restaurant occupies a densely developed section of Brigittenau between the neighborhood's traditional commercial streets, nineteenth-century residential buildings and the historic approaches toward Augarten. The street frontage preserves the understated character of a neighborhood restaurant, establishing an intimate entrance within a district whose commercial architecture developed around independent shops and local establishments. Inside, contemporary furnishings, dark surfaces and carefully arranged lighting create an informal dining environment, with an open kitchen bringing culinary preparation directly into the principal room. A chef's table provides an especially close relationship with the kitchen, and a courtyard terrace extends the restaurant into a sheltered outdoor environment during warmer months. The result is a restaurant whose unassuming street presence, open culinary workspace and relaxed contemporary interiors give internationally distinguished gastronomy an unusually personal setting within Vienna's twentieth district.
What defines Mraz & Sohn.
Mraz & Sohn is best known for the transformation of a family-operated Viennese neighborhood restaurant into a two-MICHELIN-starred institution through successive generations of the Mraz family. The family's hospitality origins reach to a great-grandfather who operated a Viennese coffeehouse and Karl-Heinz Mraz, whose traditional Beisl established the immediate professional background for his son Markus. Born in Vienna in 1968, Markus grew up in his parents' restaurant before completing his education at the Modul hospitality school and taking over an ice cream establishment on Währinger Straße in 1988. He joined his father Karl-Heinz in 1990 to establish Mraz & Sohn on Wallensteinstraße, beginning a partnership that gradually carried the establishment beyond its neighborhood restaurant origins. Gault&Millau awarded the restaurant its first toque in 1995, recognizing the development of Markus's cooking during a period when Vienna's fine-dining culture was expanding beyond the traditional establishments of the historic center. MICHELIN awarded Mraz & Sohn its first star in the 2007 guide, placing the family business among Austria's internationally recognized restaurants. A third Gault&Millau toque followed in 2008, and the publication named Markus Mraz its Rising Star of the Year in 2012. The restaurant received its second MICHELIN star in the 2016 guide, consolidating a professional achievement that had developed across more than two decades of independent family ownership. Lukas Mraz, born in 1990, pursued his own culinary education at Vienna's Gastronomiefachschule before undertaking international apprenticeships with Jean-Georges Klein at L'Arnsbourg in Baerenthal and Jonnie Boer at De Librije in Zwolle. He subsequently worked with Joachim Wissler at Vendôme in Bergisch Gladbach, gaining further exposure to the technical demands of European haute cuisine. Berlin supplied a different professional direction through Cordobar, the influential wine bar associated with Austrian restaurateur Gerhard Retter, where Lukas developed a more informal approach to ambitious cooking. His return to the family restaurant brought a significant generational transition, with Markus and Lukas assuming joint culinary leadership and Manuel Mraz directing the dining-room operation. A major interior renovation in 2018 moved the open kitchen into the front section of the restaurant, giving the younger generation greater freedom to reshape the relationship between cooking, music and hospitality. Gault&Millau named Markus Mraz Chef of the Year for 2018, recognizing the career that had established the restaurant's international standing. Lukas subsequently gained a wider public profile through appearances on the German-language television series Kitchen Impossible and his collaboration with Philip Rachinger and Felix Schellhorn in the culinary collective Healthy Boy Band. The family's development across three generations established Mraz & Sohn as an important example of independent Viennese gastronomy shaped by inherited hospitality traditions and sustained creative reinvention.
Markus and Lukas Mraz's cooking centers on an Austrian culinary foundation expanded through international ingredients, unconventional flavor combinations and a deliberately unpredictable tasting-menu format. The kitchen develops its compositions around the principle of using the complete ingredient, extending traditional nose-to-tail cooking into root-to-flower vegetable preparation and fin-to-head treatment of fish. This philosophy gives individual products several culinary possibilities, with lesser-used portions contributing concentrated stocks, fermented accompaniments, crisp textures and complementary preparations. A surprise menu organizes the evening into twelve culinary stages, with the principal ingredients disclosed before service and the finished combinations revealed through the sequence. The approach places considerable importance on contrast, allowing familiar Austrian products to acquire unexpected characteristics through techniques associated with Asian, Mediterranean and Central European cooking. Sika venison demonstrates the kitchen's willingness to cross culinary traditions through a kimchi börek that combines richly flavored game with fermented cabbage, crisp pastry and finely shaved Périgord truffle. The venison contributes a concentrated savory foundation, and the kimchi supplies acidity and fermentation-derived complexity that sharpen the richness of the meat. Truffle introduces an earthy aromatic component, connecting the preparation to classical European luxury ingredients through an unconventional pastry format. Vegetable preparations receive comparable attention, with roots, leaves, stems and blossoms contributing contrasting textures and flavors across the menu. Fermentation and pickling extend the usefulness of seasonal produce, allowing acidity and concentrated vegetable flavors to develop through controlled preservation. The kitchen's broad approach to ingredient utilization also creates opportunities for unexpected relationships between offal, seafood, grains and carefully selected spices. Vegetarian and pescatarian adaptations preserve the same emphasis on creative combinations and technical precision. Wine service develops a complementary approach through an extensive cellar and pairings that respond to the menu's changing levels of acidity, richness and aromatic intensity. The restaurant's distinctive culinary character emerges from this combination of Austrian cooking traditions, comprehensive ingredient utilization and a family partnership willing to challenge conventional expectations of fine dining.
How Mraz & Sohn fits.
Mraz & Sohn works as the evening culmination of an outing connecting Brigittenau's historic neighborhood commerce, the architectural ambitions of Vienna's nineteenth-century urban expansion and the imperial origins of one of the city's most distinguished public gardens.
Begin at Hannovermarkt, whose origins reach to the Brigittamarkt established on Brigittaplatz in 1850 during the early development of Brigittenau as a densely populated residential and commercial district. The original market supplied provisions to a growing neighborhood whose expansion accelerated through industrialization and the regulation of the Danube. Municipal authorities ordered the relocation of the market toward Kluckygasse, Webergasse and Hannovergasse in September 1905, responding to the increasing demands placed on the original market square. The market moved to its established site in 1913 on land leased from Klosterneuburg Abbey, which historically possessed extensive property holdings across Brigittenau. Its official designation as Hannovermarkt followed in 1930, preserving a reference to the Hanoverian royal family and the political geography of the Austro-Prussian War. Severe damage during the Second World War required extensive reconstruction, and a major redevelopment between 1963 and 1965 introduced the organized rows of permanent market stalls associated with its later appearance. A municipal renovation completed in 2020 strengthened the structures and renewed the market's public facilities, preserving an important commercial institution whose food stalls connect Austrian agricultural products with the district's diverse international communities. Continue to Brigittakirche, the imposing Neo-Gothic parish church whose construction accompanied Brigittenau's nineteenth-century transformation from flood-prone riverside settlement into a rapidly expanding urban district. Vienna's municipal authorities approved the establishment of a dedicated parish church in 1867, commissioning Friedrich von Schmidt, the architect subsequently associated with Vienna City Hall, to develop the building. Schmidt designed a three-aisled basilican structure with six bays, a polygonal choir and a prominent twin-towered façade, drawing upon early Gothic architectural forms. Construction extended through 1874, producing a substantial ecclesiastical building whose brick exterior and restrained stone ornamentation responded to the financial constraints of the project. The church's dedication to Saint Bridget preserved the district's association with its patron saint, giving the surrounding square a permanent religious and architectural center. Its development coincided with major infrastructure projects, including the construction of railway bridges and the regulation of the Danube, which opened extensive areas of Brigittenau to urban settlement. Conclude at Augarten, Vienna's oldest surviving Baroque garden and a major landscape associated with the recreational culture of the Habsburg court. Emperor Matthias commissioned a hunting lodge on the former Danube floodplain in 1614, establishing an imperial presence in a landscape subsequently developed through successive garden projects. Leopold I directed a Baroque transformation during the seventeenth century, although the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683 caused extensive destruction. Emperor Charles VI commissioned further formal landscaping under Jean Trehet in 1712, introducing the axial arrangement of avenues and ornamental gardens associated with the French Baroque tradition. Joseph II opened the gardens to the public in 1775, bringing an imperial recreational landscape into the cultural life of the broader Viennese population. The grounds expanded through subsequent imperial construction and landscape improvements, developing into a fifty-two-hectare park whose mature avenues preserve the geometry of the historic garden. Two massive antiaircraft towers constructed during the Second World War introduce a stark architectural reminder of Vienna's twentieth-century history, their reinforced concrete forms standing among the park's formal plantings and historic buildings. The progression moves from Hannovermarkt's nineteenth-century commercial foundations through Friedrich von Schmidt's Neo-Gothic parish church and culminates in Augarten's imperial landscape, connecting Mraz & Sohn to the commercial, architectural and social development of Vienna's northern districts.
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