The Awakening Table: March to May
It feels like spring has finally entered the room, and with it, its first seasonal ingredients. This is one of the most joyful times to eat in the country – when restraint gives way to abundance, and everyone, from chefs to market sellers to home cooks, tends to what has just been plucked from the ground, the forest and the water, with an almost reverent attention.
Seasonal Produce
Eating with the seasons is second nature in Austria. Produce is bought at its peak, cooked simply and genuinely looked forward to – the arrival of asparagus or the first strawberries of May carries real anticipation. Food in season simply tastes better and Austrians know it. Use the table below to navigate what is fresh and when, and jump straight to any ingredient.
Rhubarb
Radishes
Trout and Arctic Char
Wild Garlic: Bärlauch
Spring in Austria begins with forests and riverbanks erupting with Bärlauch, or wild garlic – broad, glossy leaves with a sharp, pungent scent somewhere between garlic and spring onion.
Wild garlic likes damp ground in shaded deciduous forests and near riverbanks, growing abundantly in the woodlands of the Salzkammergut, the Wienerwald and the valleys of Styria. For a few weeks in March and April it is everywhere: bundled at farm stalls, on display at markets and folded into restaurant menus with barely disguised enthusiasm.
Used with a similar freedom to basil in summer, you'll find wild garlic in Knödel ( bread or potato dumplings), stirred through scrambled eggs, pressed into butter, made into pesto-like spreads, added to salads or transformed into one of my favourite spring dishes, Bärlauchcremesuppe (wild garlic soup). Some restaurants offer a Bärlauch cream sauce alongside fish – particularly trout or char – and it appears as a garnish on everything from risotto-style grain dishes to cured meats.
White Asparagus: Spargel
Spargelzeit! One of the defining ingredients in Austrian spring cooking is white asparagus (Spargel), also known as "Weißes Gold" (White Gold). This is not the familiar green variety: Austrian white asparagus is thick, ivory-pale and earthy-sweet, grown under mounds of soil to prevent sunlight from turning it green.
The season runs roughly from late April to June, and its arrival is treated with genuine excitement. The Marchfeld region, the agricultural plain east of Vienna stretching towards the Slovakian border, is the country's most celebrated growing area, producing asparagus with a delicate flavour.
In restaurants, white asparagus often comes poached, steamed or roasted and served with melted butter, a sprinkle of breadcrumbs and a soft-boiled or poached egg, or draped in hollandaise sauce and paired with Wiener Schnitzel or smoked trout or cured ham. At the more rustic end of the spectrum, a simple plate of Spargel with new potatoes and brown butter is considered just perfect.
Green Asparagus: Grüner Spargel
The versatile green asparagus (grüner Spargel) is also a welcome ingredient in the Austrian kitchen. While the white asparagus takes the spotlight, the green asparagus is celebrated for its robust texture and ease of preparation. Its season also runs from April to 24th June (see below for the reason given for its specific end-of-season date), with peak season in April and May.
While in season, its availability and versatility will see it featured on many a local restaurant's menu. It works well as both the main event or in a supporting role on the plate – a delight dressed in decadent hollandaise sauce, a culinary treat in risottos and a welcome addition to salads and soups.
Elderflower: Holunderblüte
These fragrant, creamy-white blossoms are a staple of Austrian life. Elderflower season in Austria typically runs from mid-May to early-July (so just manages to sneak into our 'Spring' season post!), with peak blooming occurring in June. Gathered in late spring, the best foraging time is usually limited to a few weeks for maximum aroma.
A social plant, it tends to grow near people. Elder trees (Holunder) grow prolifically across Austria, in gardens and forests, around vineyards and along roadsides, on field edges and by riverbanks. Elderflower is deeply rooted in Austrian culture, traditions and culinary habits. It has long been regarded as having healing and medicinal properties and used to treat illnesses.
One of its popular uses is Holunderblütensirup – a cordial made by steeping the blossoms with sugar, lemon, and citric acid – made by home cooks every May. Blossoms are dried to make elderflower tea. Restaurants use the flowers to flavour pannacotta, sorbets, salad dressings and sparkling drinks. The blossoms are also delicious fried in a light batter (Gebackene Holunderblüten or Hollerküchle) – a classic Austrian preparation, particularly in rural areas, and served dusted with icing sugar.
Foraging elderflower is common, legal and culturally normal in Austria.
Strawberries: Erdbeeren
By late May, the first Austrian strawberries appear – small, intensely fragrant, and nothing like the year-round supermarket variety. They appear in farmers' markets from end of May onwards.
In restaurants, strawberries are treated simply: with cream, with vanilla sugar or sliced over Kaiserschmarrn (Austria's famous shredded pancake). An iconic strawberry dessert is Erdbeerknödel (strawberry Topfen dumplings) made from curd cheese dough, boiled and rolled in buttery cinnamon breadcrumbs. The most traditional, and arguably the best way, is a bowl of berries with a jug of cold cream – nothing else.
Regions renowned for their strawberries are Lower Austria, Upper Austria and Styria which produce the majority of Austria's strawberries. Wiesen, a town in Burgenland, is famed for its high-quality strawberries, locally known as Wiesener Ananaserdbeeren (Wiesen pineapple strawberries) for their intense flavour.
Pick-your-own strawberries is a favourite Austrian springtime activity. In season, you will find strawberry farms and Selbstpflückfelder (self-pick fields) in every state.
Rhubarb: Rhabarber
Rhubarb is widely grown in Austrian gardens and smallholdings – it is one of the first harvests of the year and its arrival in April is genuinely anticipated.
Austria has a well-established rhubarb tradition in baking and preserving. You'll find rhubarb Strudel, rhubarb Kompott (stewed with vanilla and sugar, served with cream or semolina), rhubarb jam, rhubarb tart and, increasingly, rhubarb in more creative restaurant preparations – sorbets, cured fish accompaniments and cocktail syrups. It appears at virtually every farmers' market from late April and is one of Austria's beloved spring ingredients.
Rhubarb season finishes at the end of June to ensure regeneration for the following year.
Radishes: Radi / Radieschen
Austria has a well-known radish culture, with the season starting early: March or April, running all the way through to autumn, with significant harvests taking place in the Tyrol region. In fact, Halls-Watten is home to "Tyrol's largest vegetable garden", where the humble radish is celebrated with its own festival and a radish princess!
The long white Radi (white radish, similar to the Japanese daikon) is an iconic Viennese and Bavarian-influenced snack, served thinly spiral-sliced, salted, and eaten with beer – a preparation so associated with Viennese Heurigen (wine taverns) culture that it has its own identity.
Spring also brings the round red Radieschen, which appear at markets from April and are eaten with butter and salt on dark bread or sliced into salads. The radish is a modest, yet fundamental, component of Austrian cuisine.
Salad Leaves and Spinach: Salat und Spinat
You know spring has arrived when the heavy, warm comfort food of winter gives way to lighter and brighter dishes, and nothing says 'light' like a salad. In April and May, we start to see spring leaves appearing: butterhead/round lettuce (Häuptelsalat), and other loose leaf lettuces, and spinach (Spinat).
Butterhead lettuce is the salad leaf of choice in traditional Austrian cuisine. When Austrians think of a green salad, this is what they picture: the Grüner Salat dressed simply with pumpkin seed oil (particularly in Styria), apple cider vinegar and salt is a staple that comes alive when the leaves are young and fresh.
Spinach has two primary fresh seasons, autumn and spring, but the most celebrated time for fresh spinach in Austria is spring, with the "Easter Spike" where spinach consumption peaks on Gründonnerstag (Maundy Thursday). According to a Kronen Zeitung survey, on this day, over a quarter of Austrians claim to traditionally eat spinach dishes.
Known as "spring spinach", its leaves are typically smaller, more tender and sweeter, making them ideal for fresh salads or light sautés, though equally as delicious in the traditional Spinatknödel (spinach dumplings).
Trout and Arctic Char: Forelle und Saibling
Brown trout (Forelle) and Arctic char (Saibling) are the crown jewels of freshwater cooking in Austria. The primary wild fishing season for these species in the Austrian Alps begins around May (region and species regulation-dependent).
In traditional Austrian restaurants, trout is most commonly served blau – poached whole in a court-bouillon with vinegar, which turns the skin a distinctive blue-grey – or pan-fried in butter (Müllerin-Art). You will find these dishes in alpine Gasthäuser particularly in Tyrol, Salzburg and Styria, often served with boiled potatoes and a wedge of lemon.
Char tends to be handled with slightly more finesse – it has a more delicate flavour and appears on the menus of high-end restaurants – sometimes cured, sometimes served as a tartare, sometimes simply pan-roasted with spring herbs.
Austrian spring is worth experiencing at table as much as anywhere else. The ingredients are unpretentious, the preparations are simple, and the quality – when you're eating what's local and in season – is genuinely hard to match. If you find yourself in Austria between March and May, let the market be your guide. What's piled highest on the vendor's table is almost always what's worth eating that week.
Illustrations by Teresa Rock. © 2026 Teresa Rock
