Café Sabarsky Is Manhattan’s Ultimate Coffee Break

By day three, it dawned on me that no one cared whether I adhered to my plans or not — so I started to veer off-script. Delineated breakfasts, lunches, and dinners became early casualties of this newfound lack of routine. Back home, my cafeteria meals were utilitarian affairs — heavy on the kale, low on pleasure, usually shoveled down between classes. Left to my own devices, I found myself quietly thrilled at eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.

That’s how I wound up, one dark and snowy evening, at Café Central, a venerable 19th-century institution with the vaulted ceilings of a Romanesque cathedral. The banquettes were velvet. A pianist played softly in the backdrop. It all felt wildly luxurious, but for the price of a whipped cream-tufted coffee, the bowtie-wearing waiters welcomed a scruffy college kid like any other guest. So I sat for hours, eating a slice of sachertorte for dinner and basking in the warm, twilight glow of it all. I loved it so much I went back every evening until I left town.

While Vienna’s Café Central has no equal, it does have a döppelganger on New York’s Upper East Side.

Café Sabarsky, located in the Neue Galerie, feels as though a grand kaffeehaus circa 1915 was disassembled and reassembled brick-by-brick across the Atlantic à la the Cloisters. The interior is all dark wood and marble table tops and richly patterned Otto Wagner upholstery. Both Josef Hoffmann, who is responsible for the soft lighting fixtures, and Adolf Loos, who designed the furniture, might well have wandered into the Café Central when Freud and Trotsky played chess there.

In the wrong hands, this might all plunge into camp territory. But here, the Old World simulacra is uncanny. From the selection of schorle (flavored sparkling water or lemonade) with Holunderblüten or Preiselbeeren (elderflower or lingonberry) syrups to the alpine schnapps, it’s clear chef Christopher Engel is faithful to his source material.

Perhaps because I once found refuge in such a place, Café Sabarsky is by far my favorite spot to take out-of-town visitors. Whenever I am showing friends or family around, I’m forcibly reminded that New York has the capacity to overwhelm, that it operates by its own opaque rules of physics and logic, that it is louder and larger than most places.

When I see the familiar traveler fatigue setting in, I suggest kaffee und kuchen (coffee and cake). Café Sabarsky is exactly five minutes by foot from The Met or three from The Guggenheim — a gift of ease in a city where getting from point A to B often feels utterly insane to the unaccustomed. On a sunny afternoon, a half-hour stroll from the New York Historical Society or Natural History Museum through the wilds of the Ramble in Central Park will take you here as well. Outside, sirens rage and cab drivers blast their horns, but inside, the volume is dialed down to a comfortable conversational hum. Inside, to quote Joel Grey, life is beautiful.

Most importantly, an extraordinary selection of cakes is on display at all times under their glass domes. There is the sachertorte, of course, along with the signature Klimt torte, striated with thin layers of hazelnut cake and ganache, which was unveiled in honor of Gustav Klimt’s 150th birthday. The apple strudel is flaky, gently spiced, and served mit Sahne. The Punschkrapferl — cubes of rum-soaked sponge cake enrobed in shocking pink — look like they belong in the adjacent galleries, as does the Adele Schnitte, with luminous passion fruit gelée and coconut mousse.

There are no wrong choices, but for sheer deliciousness, my go-to will always be the Kaiserschmarrn — the “Emperor’s Mess.” It’s a dessert seldom found on New York menus, one often rudely translated as a “chopped-up pancake.” At Café Sabarsky, it’s described as a “shredded, caramelized crêpes soufflé” which inches closer to the truth. I think of it as Austria’s answer to clafoutis, an eggy skillet cake that is both custardy and light. Before fully set, the cook scrambles it, allowing the craggy edges to sizzle in butter and sugar. It arrives warm, accompanied by a roasted fruit compote and a sprinkle of slivered almonds. After sharing a plate — it is one dessert here that demands an extra spoon — the prospect of exploring the city regains its luster.

Much as I like to bring travelers here, Café Sabarsky is also the perfect place to go when I want to pretend to be one. New Yorkers love to scoff at tourists, but I envy them sometimes. It’s quite a thing to wander wide-eyed through an unfamiliar city. When I need a break from my own adult regimented life, this wondrous, incongruous coffee house is just right.

I know I’m not alone in this. A friend who is normally a steadfast vegan makes a regular exception to share a slice of torte with his fiancé here. For others, it’s the perfect coda to date night at The Met — a restaurant almost as storied as the museum itself in a neighborhood where others lack character. It feels fancy enough to make any visit a special occasion, without being so prohibitively expensive as to require one.

It’s especially transportive on winter evenings, when the air has a bite to it. Dinner is fantastic, from the dainty palatschinken (crêpes) rolled around smoked trout to the handsomely browned schnitzel — easily one of the best in New York — accompanied by the requisite lingonberry jam and a tangy cucumber potato salad. It is impossible for me to eat it without instantly feeling 4,000 miles away.

On Thursday nights, there’s Weimar-inspired cabaret downstairs in Café Fledermaus, the basement cafe of the Neue Galerie. Upstairs, a Bösendorfer grand piano tinkles away. The tables are closer together than in Vienna and the ambient chatter is mostly in English, but there’s still the perception of sliding into another place and time, one somehow removed from the rules of ordinary life.

Café Sabarsky is open from Wednesday to Monday starting at 9 a.m. and until 6 p.m. on Monday and 9 p.m. from Wednesday to Sunday.

Diana Hubbell is a James Beard Award-winning food and travel journalist whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, Atlas Obscura, VICE, Eater, Condé Nast Traveler, Esquire, WIRED, and Travel + Leisure, among other places. Previously based in Berlin and Bangkok, she currently lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Follow her on Instagram. Follow Resy, too.