In 1927 Viktor Zauner took over the Café Esplanade and created a branch to the existing pastry shop in Bad Ischls Pfarrgasse, which was already founded in 1832. The Esplanade-Café Zauner turned out to be the meeting place of artists. For the most famous operetta composers like Franz Lehar, Oscar Straus, Leo Fall, Leo Ascher, Edmund Eysler. Vocalists: Leo Sezak, Alfred Piccaver, Erik Schmedes, Richard Tauber, Helge Roswaenge. Writers: Hermann Bahr, Felix Salten ...

There, in the Esplanade-Café Zauner, Franz Lehar paid his gambling debts and sometimes the wafers he bought with a newly composed "Liedl" (song). In the last decades the Esplanade-Café was leased and you wouldn´t notice the splendour of the past. In the fall of 1982 Gärdi Zauner took over again and invested 10 million schillings in the renovation of this prominent meeting place of artists. Today the Esplanade-Café shines in new old splendour.

Opening hours beginning with the summer-season 2005:

24.04.2005 - 09.10.2005 and 01.05.2006 - 08.10.2006: daily from 10.00 am to 10.00 pm

10.10.2005 - 02.11.2005, 03.12.2005 - 09.01.2006 and 06.02.2006 - 30.04.2006: daily from Wednesday to Sunday from 10.00 am to 08.00 pm