Cafe Katja.

Johannes Kepler used the figure panis quadragesimalis--the Lenten pretzel--to illustrate the knotty path certain planets would have to take to circle the Earth, but supposing the pretzel, not the sun, is the center of the universe, then Erwin Schrottner, the owner of Cafe Katja, might be its Copernicus, the guy who has it all figured out. The pretzels at Katja bear little resemblance to petrified pushcart versions; they're not jawbreakers, in the Snyder's mode, nor soggy, like Auntie Anne's, with superfluous glucosey glop. Don't expect mustard, either. Toasty little twisters, they come with pots of sweet Liptauer, seasoned with onions, chives, paprika, and caraway seeds. Guten Appetit!

Schrottner, along with a partner, Andrew Chase, opened the place in the fall, though a catering company that he owns, in midtown, "provides the bread every day that my family lives off." Schrottner presides over the small, stylish dining room (lace curtains, pinecones, a panoramic poster von der Schmittenhohe) most nights, decked in foresty woollens, as if he had just stepped out of Loden-Plankl. He conceived of Katja as "a home away from home for Austrians," and named it after one of his three daughters. Hesitantly, he larded the menu with the staples of his native Graz (where Kepler was banished in 1600 for refusing to convert to Catholicism): speck, blood ...