Austria

Vienna

Does the coffee-house city take ice cream as seriously as it takes cake?

Vienna's ice cream arrived with nineteenth-century Italian migration from the Zoldo valley and the Veneto, and the Molin Pradel family who founded the Eissalon am Schwedenplatz in 1886 are now on their sixth generation on the same corner near Stephansdom, still producing at their own Manifattura del Gelato in Seestadt Aspern. Tichy, founded 1952 at Reumannplatz, holds a patent on the Eismarillenknödel and just passed its third generation into the hands of a trained Konditormeisterin. A newer wave -- Schelato, Gelato Carlo, Gelati Serafini -- competes on ingredient transparency (95% organic, no fertigprodukte) and wins the Falstaff community vote almost every year, and Veganista, founded 2013 by two sisters, built Austria's first fully vegan gelateria into a ten-plus-location chain sold nationally through SPAR. The city's own Lebensmittelbuch (Codex Alimentarius Austriacus) runs a Speiseeis chapter structurally parallel to Germany's Leitsätze, with named categories and minimum fruit content by law-adjacent guideline rather than statute.

Last checked 2026-08-21

The selected spots

7 selected

01
Eissalon am Schwedenplatz
gelato · Molin Pradel family, sixth generation (Leonardo and Francesco Molin Pradel, sons of Silvio and Deborah)
A 140-year-old Italian-migrant family business that still makes its own gelato at its own facility inside the city and can document six generations by name, year and address on its own site -- rare depth even by this project's standard.
02
From Eissalon Tichy
Eissalon Tichy
ice cream · Xenia Tichy, Konditormeisterin (pastry-chef qualified), third generation
A patented, named invention held by one family across three generations for 74 years, with the succession now explicitly a trained pastry chef -- exactly the specialist-commitment signal this project looks for.
03
Gelati Serafini
gelato
Two consecutive years of a large public vote (50,000 voters per Falstaff, per Der Standard's report) plus a directly-confirmed no-shortcuts ingredient policy from a 70-plus-year-old family business.
04
From Gelato Carlo
Gelato Carlo
gelato · Carlo (surname not given on the site), described as the son of an Austrian mother and an Armenian father
A named maker with a stated, distinctive personal identity behind the flavour philosophy, backed by both a public vote and a specialist guide in the same year.
05
From Schelato
Schelato
gelato
A verified 95%-organic ingredient claim from an independent local listing (not the business's own marketing copy) plus a specific, named specialist-guide endorsement of one flavour.
06
From Veganista
Veganista
gelato · Cecilia Havmöller and Susanna Paller, co-founders, sisters
A founder-led, named origin story with a specific date and specific technical decisions (plant-milk selection for allergy accommodation), independently confirmed across two separate interviews three years apart.
07
From Eis-Greissler
Eis-Greissler
gelato · Andrea and Georg Blochberger, dairy farmers, founders
An exceptionally direct provenance chain -- the same family's cows, the same family's dairy, the same family's ice cream -- but the production itself is outside Vienna, which is recorded honestly rather than implied.