Austria

Claim a marble table in a Viennese Kaffeehaus, order a Melange and a slab of Sachertorte, and settle in — a single coffee buys you the table for as long as you like, and the café is less a shop than a public living room. Austria still eats like the empire it once ran from here: refined, comforting, unbothered by the passing centuries. The Wiener Schnitzel, veal pounded thin and fried to a blistered gold, is the national pride, best with nothing more than a lemon wedge.

The everyday soul of it is humbler. Late at night the Würstelstand on the corner splits a Käsekrainer — a sausage that oozes molten cheese — into a crust of bread with a stripe of sweet mustard. Dumplings turn up everywhere, savoury Knödel beside the roast or sweet Marillenknödel hiding a whole apricot, and Styria drizzles its dark, nutty pumpkin-seed oil over everything. Wash it down with a peppery glass of Grüner Veltliner, and finish, always, with cake.