the best slow fast-food

When I am in Vienna, I always go to my favourite place: the Naschmarkt, which is Vienna's biggest and most touristic market. I love to go there an buy cheese (my favourite is a matured Goat Gouda), herbs (the cheapest place in Austria to buy cilantro), curry pastes and my beloved falafel (after years of testing I found tthe tastiest at Dr Falafel). I also love the things they grill at the market different restaurants: Kofte at okzident, calamari at Do-An. At Kurkonditorei Oberlaaan one can find an mouth-watering chocolate cake.

Last weekend, Andi F took me to another market, the Brunnenmarkt. And the experience was incredible: One third of the stands were selling fruits and vegetables at very cheap prices (I assume it was because the products were ripe and needed to be sold soon, but the fruits were at their best stage). Another third of the stands was selling nuts, seeds and cheese (from Denmark, Holland, Italy and Austria) and the resting third, were stands selling the most useless Chinese products in history: battery-operated plush pets in horrendous colours, awful baseball caps and the cheapest clothes you can ever imagine.

For us, the best in the market were the few places you can get prepared food: We saw real kepab (were you can see that the meat was manually placed into that rotating pole), fresh fish they clean for you to cook home or if you prefer, they grill and serve the fish for you. But the best of this stands was a real slow food stand:

It looked like a normal fast-food stand and inside there were three Turks: One thin guy in his early 50's and two obese women, whose age we were unable to guess. They seemed old, but with some married Turkish women you can never know if they are 30 or 60.

This Turkish version of an Italian mamma, were preparing in a very calm way, somethin that looked like a home-style borek. The ladies were slowly rolling dough, forming pizza-like shapes, then they carefully topp this „tortillas“ with plenty olive-size portions of cooked and seasoned spinach, grounded meat, potatoes or sheep cheese, depending on the client's taste. After finishing the topping, these mammas folded the dough to form a square the size of a DVD case and cooked them on a huge pan which seemed to be upside down.

We ordered one of this Turkisch crepes filed with spinach and got 10 minutes later. The process was easy and the cooking took only 3 to 4 minutes, but the acurate and love-full preparation of this dish took over 10 minutes.

Seeing this entire process was beautufil, but to taste it, it was a culinary-trip to a small village in Anatolia and back to Vienna for only €1.5

I am not exagerating, it was the best „slow“ fast-food experience I've had in Europe.