Wiener Melange

What it is

The Wiener Melange is a shot of strong coffee with hot milk and a cap of milk foam, roughly half and half, served in a cup on a small metal tray with a glass of cold water beside it and the spoon laid across the glass. It is close to a cappuccino and not the same drink: milder coffee, softer foam, no cocoa.

The tray is the part that matters. The water comes without being ordered and is refilled without being asked for, and the price of the cup includes the chair: a Viennese coffee house expects a customer to sit for as long as they like over one coffee, with the newspapers, and a waiter who clears a cup too briskly is doing the job wrong. Vienna's coffee-house culture was added to Austria's national inventory of intangible cultural heritage in 2011 for exactly this — the room and its rules, not the recipe.

The history of the Viennese coffee house

Coffee houses appeared in Vienna in the late 17th century, after the Ottoman siege of 1683. The story the city tells involves an interpreter named Georg Franz Kolschitzky, who had carried messages through the Ottoman lines and was supposedly rewarded with the first licence and a quantity of abandoned coffee beans; it is folklore, repeated on plaques, and the documentary record points elsewhere. By the 19th century the houses were where the city did its thinking, and writers who had no heated room of their own worked in them all day for the price of one coffee.

The Melange belongs to that arrangement. It is the mid-strength option — enough coffee to be coffee, enough milk to last several hours — which is why it became the default order of people who intended to stay.

Ordering one, among all the others

Asking for "a coffee" in a Viennese coffee house produces a question in return, because the menu is a list of ratios rather than of names. A Kleiner or Großer Brauner is coffee with a little milk, small or large. A Schwarzer or Mokka is black. A Verlängerter is lengthened with hot water. An Einspänner comes in a glass under a thick cap of whipped cream, with the handle to hold it by. A Kapuziner is black coffee with just enough cream to turn it the colour of a Capuchin's habit; a Franziskaner is a Melange with whipped cream instead of milk foam.

The Melange sits in the middle of all this and is the safest order for anyone who has not learned the list. The waiter — Herr Ober, never a barista — will not be surprised by it.

How it is served

In a cup, on a small metal tray, with the water glass and the spoon across it. The foam is steamed rather than whipped: it should be soft enough to drink through and to sink slowly into the coffee as the cup cools, not stiff.

A slice of cake is optional and usual. Sachertorte and Apfelstrudel are the standard partners, and the bitterness of the coffee is what makes a whole slice of either possible. Nobody will hurry the order, or the cup, or the departure.

Curious facts

• The room is the heritage. Viennese coffee-house culture went onto Austria's national inventory of intangible cultural heritage in 2011 — the institution, not the drink.
• The water is free. A glass of cold water is always served with the coffee and is refilled by staff without the need for a request.
• No rush hour. Customers are expected to stay as long as they like over a single cup, reading newspapers provided by the house.
• A cup, not a glass. The Melange comes in a cup; the glass belongs to the water, and to the Einspänner.
• Foam, not cream. Milk foam makes a Melange. Whipped cream in the same cup makes it a Franziskaner.

Where to try it

Any traditional coffee house in Vienna, of which the city still has a great many — marble tables, bentwood chairs, a rack of newspapers on a pole, and a waiter in a dinner jacket who is in no hurry. The ones in the inner districts are the famous ones; the quieter houses out in the residential districts serve the same thing to people who come every day. The test of a good house is not the coffee but whether anybody minds how long one cup takes.