Salzburg for foodies

Best restaurants

Salzburg's dining reputation runs on baroque cliché (the Mozart schnitzel, the Sound-of-Music dinner theatre, the cake windows in the tourist arcades), while the eating that matters happens in the working blocks of postal code 5020. This is a list of twelve restaurants there, all mapped, all still cooking (with one asterisk), all with a bias toward rooms that cook one thing well rather than everything for everyone. You will not find a Michelin tasting menu, and you will not find fake alpine kitsch. What you will find: a regional kitchen whose service runs to 02:00, a Thai room that has held to its cuisine, an Indian counter that outlasts fashion, a Mexican bar keeping a short menu, a diner that opens the nights it can staff, and a couple of one-cuisine specialists that take their single cuisine seriously. Rank order below is a local editor's judgement, not a Google score. The asterisk: one entry is currently closed for renovation. We included it anyway, because guides that quietly drop closed rooms turn into advertising sheets for whichever chains stayed open through the works.