Trześniewski Brötchen (Viennese Mini Open-Faced Sandwiches)

Every visit Gretel and Eva made to Vienna included a stop at Trześniewski. I was maybe eight or nine the first time they took me, and I remember being confused by the size of the sandwiches. They were tiny, barely three fingers wide, lined up on trays behind a glass counter like jewels in a case. Gretel ordered six of them without looking at the menu and handed me one topped with something creamy and flecked with paprika. Liptauer, she said. Try it. I ate it in two bites and wanted four more.

Trześniewski Brötchen are not sandwiches the way most people think of sandwiches. They're closer to a ritual. You stand at the counter, you choose your spreads from a dozen or more options, you eat them with your fingers, and you wash each one down with a Pfiff, a tiny glass of beer that holds barely more than a few swallows. Nobody sits down. Nobody lingers over a single sandwich. You eat three, five, seven, standing shoulder to shoulder with everyone from law students to opera singers to postal workers on their lunch break.

The bread is always dark rye, sliced thin and cut into rectangles. The spreads are the real work. Each one is made fresh, ground or minced until it holds together on the bread without sliding off, seasoned with the kind of precision that comes from making the same thing every day for a hundred years. I serve a version of these at my restaurant in Salzburg when we host standing receptions, and they disappear faster than anything else on the table. Five spreads is what I'm giving you here. Make all five. Line them up on a wooden board. Invite people over. This is good Austrian home cooking at its most sociable.