Interestingly enough, when I was checking out the three Michelin starred restaurants in Salzburg, one of them is named "Carpe Diem". The term came from a Latin aphorism that is often translated to "seize the day". I thought I had to check this one out myself.
Carpe Diem Finest Fingerfood became our second Michelin-starred restaurant in Salzburg (after lunch at Restaurant Ikarus @Hangar-7) for the second meal in a roll. Opened in 2005, the restaurant is under the watchful eyes of Austrian Chef Franz Fuiko, a former "Best chef of the Year" award winner in Austria (1994). After stints in Marseille and Colorado, Chef Fuiko returned to Austria in 1997. His cuisine is known to be classic yet a little playful.
Before dinner, we spent some time hanging out at the Old Town of Salzburg. It's small but really well-preserved and charming.
Carpe Diem Finest Fingerfood is a dining concept created by Dietrich Mateschitz, the inventor of Red Bull. Housed in a 2-story building. it combines a ground floor café and bar with a first-floor fine dining restaurant all under one roof.
My first impression of the dining room, hm....it looks a little more like a tea salon.
The restaurant offers a fairly extensive a la carte menu and a few set menus differed by the number of courses. We ended up ordering the 4-course set at €75 which we thought gave us the best value for money.
Bread was first served with a special sea-salt and plain butter.
So this is where the name "finger food" came from - fast finger food that was served in cones. It's also our welcome dish from the Chef - a beef tartare with mashed potatoes served in a cone (6/10).
A further amuse bouche came in the form of a poached char fish with broccoli, pea purée and radish (4/10).
The first course of the set menu was an innovatively designed starter with langoustine, sweet corn, chorizo and coconut. A circular cracker made with sugar was sitting on top of the plate with some edible leaves, spicy chorizo, sweet corn purée, chili powder and coconut ice-cream atop. Underneath the cracker were a few pieces of poached langoustines resting on a sweet corn pudding.
Honestly, we didn't know where to start with this dish. Neither did our server offer any hint on how the chef thought we should proceed to best enjoy this course.
We ended up crushing the cracker and tried to enjoy each piece of langoustine with a little portion of the sweet corn pudding, the cracker and the coconut ice-cream.
I felt they had something special going with this creation. The taste was very complex - contrasting flavors and textures coming together but too bad they failed to harmonize with each other (5/10).
The second course was less complicated this time - a Danube salmon showered with a parsley foam and served with an avocado flan and fermented garlic. This was my first time having Danube salmon.
I have long heard about its delightful texture and taste which is quite similar to tuna but it was surprisingly disappointing. The meat was very mushy and the taste was a little too fishy for me. I didn't like this dish at all (1.5/10).
Barbarie duck followed and finally we had something with a passing grade. The duck fillets were nicely roasted to medium before finishing with some lavender, peach and fennel cream (6/10).
Last in line was our dessert named "Walk through the forest". Despite the decent presentation, it was a poorly executed one that included a pistachio mousse, white chocolate mousse, black currant jelly, black currant sorbet, wild berry ragout and fresh wild berries.
There was only sour taste in it but nothing more (2/10).
Apart from the largely underwhelming food, service was also under expectation. It has been one of the weakest Michelin starred restaurant we have ever dined at.
Food Rating: 5/10
Price: $$$
Address: Getreidegasse 50, 5020 Salzburg, Austria
Tel: +43 662 848800
Website: www.carpediemfinestfingerfood.com/en
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