menus are ever or often in English

I am freshly back from a weekend in Salzburg: English menus were usually available and most waiters with one exception had reasonable English. I did appreciate the fact that, unlike their German colleagues, they would follow along with my broken German instead of switching to English.

Google Translate app has a camera function that is just brilliant for translating menus, by the way. Hold the camera in front of the menu, and text will show in English on your phone screen!

Non-meat options were plentiful, and the wines were good.

Thank you balso! Thank you!

What a great app we must install!

Any Covid experiences – we had our Moderna Bivalent Vaccine on September 9th

We are nervously excited for our Oct. 7th departure to Munich

Yes, English menus are very common. It's old wisdom to avoid restaurants with non-local-language menus. Nowadays many of the best places (not all, but I'd say 70%?) have menus in English. Often it's one menu with German descriptions and an English translation below each entry. The daily specials are sometimes written on a board or list, and those are not always translated but in many cases the main menu is.

Hi Julie, when I am planning a trip, I look on TripAdvisor restaurants & the city as part of my process. I look for a few restaurants with local food, and I can usually find their menus. I am not necessarily going to eat at those specific restaurants, but they give me a good idea of the types of dishes I might see on a menu.

We ate some great meals at Salzburg, but it was several years ago, so I hesitate to give recommendations now. I do remember a delicious dish with pumpkin in it. Avoid the restaurants where someone is at the door trying to get you to come inside and eat there; the great restaurants don’t need to do it. Also, avoid the photo picture menus.

Have a great time!

I was in Salzburg three weeks ago and found it easy to find good restaurants, as well as menus in English. Sometimes we asked for English menus, other times they were offered to us. We really enjoyed our meal at Die Weisse. We ate in the biergarten and enjoyed the atmosphere (much quieter than Augustiner!). I'm not a big meat-eater and found delicious salads on most menus (with or without chicken). Also a variety of wine spritzers and fruit-flavored nonalcoholic beverages.

I recommend making dinner reservations, especially on weekends. We made ours either day-of or the day before. I saw a number of disappointed would-be diners turned away on both Friday and Saturday.

I do OK with a German Menu, but I do appreciate places that add an English "subtitle" below the menu item giving a description, makes it so much easier.

I however despise purely English menus throughout Europe. I simply know many dishes by their native language names, and to see some, often, poorly translated name is frustrating. (Imagine in Italy wanting Pasta Carbonara...and seeing "Charcoal Maker Noodles") In that case, I get a local language menu for me, and English menu for my wife. However...this has lead to some interesting discoveries as well.

I will second downloading Google Translate, make sure you load the German language to your phone for offline use, plus a simple Google search is good for telling you more about the dish, otherwise you may not know what "Vienna style" or "Hunter" Schnitzel is.

Definitely look at the Yelp listings for your city. We used those recommendations in Spain and were pleased.

As others have said, just because a restaurant has an English menu is no longer a reason to avoid it(Sorry Rick). Nowadays the common language is English and most people who speak different languages use English.

As for other drinks, non-alcoholic beer is starting to get really big in Germany, and you can always get Schlore-I like the Apfelscholre- a juice and fizzy water drink. And all big cites in Germany have vegan/vegetarian option as vegetarianism is more popular then most people think.

I've always gotten by with a list of basic menu terms as is printed in most language phrase books, such as the one RS provides tour members. After the first few times, basic terms should be familiar.

"It's old wisdom to avoid restaurants with non-local-language menus. Nowadays many of the best places (not all, but I'd say 70%?) have menus in English."

Just was thinking about the restaurants I like in Munich (fine dining as well as 'normal' food) and sorry to say non of them having menues in English. The ones I know having English menues are the ones tourists tend to visit. I'm not saying all of them are not OK but I truly belive that one is missing something if the focus is on the language of the menue.

In fact yesterday I had dinner at my favorite Italien restaurant downtown Munich (more on the fine dining side). Hand writen menue with only a few dishes they are changing according to season. A young couple from the US was sitting at the table next to us. The waiter explained them everything and gave advice and they seemed to like it a lot.

Definitely look at the Yelp listings for your city.

Yelp isn't that popular in Europe, I'd suggest Tripadvisor for a better overview.

Since English is a "universal" language, it would make sense to have it on a menu instead of listing all the possible variations.

That Google camera app is pretty amazing, but I think it's actually called Lens. At least on my phone. As my wife said, the way it works is pretty funny it looks like a cut-and-paste ransom note.

Thank you kindly everyone for your time & experience.

That Google app for translations sounds very helpful - we will check it out. We’ll be fine – we were in Paris & Venice, Florence & Rome without a translation app. We haven’t traveled since Oct. 2019 & it’s rather unnerving. Off on our RS tour in 9 days – Munich, Salzburg & Vienna.

We are lucky. We ‘speak the universal language,’ had our Bivalent Vaccine Sept. 9th, have avoided Covid & get to travel.

Your best chance of avoiding an English menu in Vienna is to go small restaurants outside of the tourist frequented areas. Not only will English not be part of the menu nor will there be a separate English menu. These are the places where the staff do not see tourists entering the establishment. Very interesting culturally and linguistically. Also the prices are lower too relative to those you see in the Ring area.

"Since English is a "universal" language, it would make sense to have it on a menu instead of listing all the possible variations."

I was thinking about this a lot and came to the conclusion how happy I am that this is not the case and hopefully never will be.

A trick on Austrian menus: while most restaurants have an English menu and they will produce it if required, it is not updated daily; the German menu will have the soup of the day and some additional listings, usually on the front page. If asking the English menu consider asking the waiter for the daily dishes, as you could lose some interesting alternatives.

When we dine on our own my husband & I have found the mom & pop cafés to be a joyous treat!