…is an ongoing project about Viennese Diners and the little different Viennese fast-food culture.Most of the time these Diners are isolated islands of food supply in an ancient surrounding with plenty of cultural heritage. Isolated both in the sense of appearance as well as in resisting global operating fast-food chains. But the ‘improper’ their architecture and appearance may appear, the much heritage they actually hold themselves.Viennese wurstel diners have been introduced during the Austro-Hungarian K.u.K. Monarchy around 1870 to establish a safe income for wounded war veterans. Since then they became an essential part of urban culture not by only supplying snacks but being the place of the distinctive Viennese working class.The sub-urban Viennese tongue is a raw one and celebrated at exactly these places so I’ve chosen the title ‘Eiterquellen’ (‘Pus Springs’) for this project. The Viennese tongue has found some questionable synonyms for the food supplied at diners, like ‘Eitrige’ (‘pus-filled’) which describes a ‘Kaesekrainer’ sausage which is filled with cheese and when put on the grill the cheese melts and oozes out. With some imagination this can look like pus. Preferably the ‘Kaesekrainer’ is served with barf (mustard) and a hump (bread roll)…Of course these ancient Viennese diners had to evolve to catch up with international fast-food chains, Kebap diners and Asian snack bars. They’ve refurbished appearance with contemporary architecture which is by the way not unfamiliar with the style of diners of the 60ies in the US. But they served the same snacks they used to serve almost 150 years ago.It appears to me as if these ‘new’ Viennese diners wanted to provoke the ancient surrounding but not their own heritage and tradition
