Fabios

At the beginning there was a glass. More precisely, two water glasses, one Bordeaux red, the other smoky grey. When Fabio Giacobello entrusted the architects Armin Ebner and Markus Spiegelfeldt with the design of fabios, he held the two glasses in front or their noses and said: “That is how I envisage my restaurant.” Of course, there were additional instructions as well. Sophisticated technical equipment, for instance, because perfect service requires extraordinarily detailed planning between the kitchen, the restaurant and the bar.

“I wanted a beautiful restaurant, not just a ‘fashionable’ place”, says Fabio Giacobello. “Food, service and, above all, quality are at the forefront. The architecture is there to highlight the culinary art and not vice versa.” However, from an optical point of view, the two architects were instructed to build fabios around the water glasses. The eye catcher is a vast glass front, which in good weather is folded away and so adds an extra dimension of size and space. The tables and he tables and chairs along the glass front create the flair of a Mediterranean restaurant. Here is the place to sit for those who like to watch and want to be seen. The rear part of the room is separated into individual sitting areas, which offer a feeling of privacy. The seats are covered in dark brown leather and combine harmoniously with the panelling of American walnut. The orange-tinted lighting adds to the relaxed atmosphere. And the glasses? Well, of course they are shown off to particular advantage.

Signature Dishes:

Behind the Stove:

Fabio Giacobello – how more Italian can a name be? A beautiful name for a flamboyant host in Vienna. The Viennese were lucky in more senses than one, that the Italian gastronomer has enlivened the Viennese culinary scene for the last ten years. After graduating from the Meran College of Hotel Management, the young Fabio Giacobello wanted to see the world and become a hotel director. “I have always been very flexible and so I started to look around.” He began in the renowned ‘Savoy’ in London, then moved on to France, Germany and the ‘Milano’ in Miami, until love brought him back to the old continent, to an Italian restaurant in Munich, where he unfortunately soon felt that he had come to a stand still. He then found a challenge in the legendary ‘Aubergine’ where the culinary icon Eckart Witzigmann drove his service crew to top performance.

After additional stopovers in Hamburg and Frankfurt, it was love that drove him elsewhere again. This time, fortunately, he ended up in Vienna, where a new restaurant needed a manager. Since then, Fabio Giacobello has been one of the most important players in the Viennese gastronomic scene. Under his management, the ‘Cantinetta Antinori’, the ‘A Tavola’ and the ‘Novelli’ became hot spots which catered not only to gourmets, but were places where notables from politics, industry and society cued for a table. However, “It was not easy to conquer the Viennese,” says Fabio Giacobello today. “If you want to survive in this environment, you simply have to deliver top quality”, and the passionate gastronomer soon concluded that the best quality can only be guaranteed in one’s own restaurant. In 2002, he fulfilled his dream and opened fabios on the Tuchlauben, in the heart of Vienna’s city centre. uchlauben, in the heart of Vienna’s city centre.”

Fabios – Facts