Some places change their name. The good ones keep their soul.

Schönbrunner Straße 30, Margareten. In 1973 a place called Motto opened here — and grew from neighbourhood haunt into a Vienna institution. Anyone who liked their nights long ended up here sooner or later.

The best Schinkenfleckerl, fine cocktails and the most beautiful bartenders in Vienna: that line dates from the Motto years. We keep quoting it because it is true.

Motto was never just a restaurant. It was living room, stage and safe harbour of queer Vienna — long before the city handed out awards for that.

That openness is not a footnote of the house's history, it is the foundation. A place that turns every evening into a stage has no use for reservations of that kind.

In 2023 the house took a new name, and it did not come out of an agency deck: Franz Thell, the man in the historical portrait, lends the restaurant his name.

A house carrying fifty years of history does not need an invented brand name. It needs one with a face.

The address says Schönbrunner Straße 30. You come in via Rüdigergasse — Margareten does not make things complicated, just interesting.

Vienna's fifth district is not on the first page of any guidebook. Which is exactly why it works for long evenings: you come for the kitchen, stay for the bar and head home when the district is long asleep.

Today Thell is both in one house: restaurant and bar, 170 seats, green velvet, marble and brass, the back restaurant and, in summer, the garden.

The menu says Wiener Weltküche, cooked until late. The bar stays open until two. And the Schinkenfleckerl never left — some things you do not touch.