At Vollpension cafe in Vienna's lively Wieden district, guests are welcomed by a silver-haired hostess who seats them around coffee tables in a room laden with embroidery. "Do-Re-Mi," from the "The Sound of Music," plays in the background. A sign in a glass display case says the apfel nusskuchen, or apple nut cake, was "handmade with love" by a woman named Zora.

If the staff, decor and food all make the place sound like grandma's house, well, that's by design.

"We want people to feel like this could be their grandmother's living room," said Vollpension's co-founder David Haller. The cafe, which started as a pop-up in 2012, now has two locations in the Austrian capital, where omas and opas bake the strudel, Linzer torte and other goodies. Two more outposts are slated to open in Salzburg and Graz.

While grandma-style cooking has been popular for about as long as we've had grandmas, it's having a moment. Call it nonna-stalgia -- a culinary offshoot of the "grandmacore" aesthetic that has Gen Z picking up knitting needles, gardening gloves and sourdough starter. Yelp, the review platform, dubbed "grandmacore dining" one of the top restaurant trends of 2026.

Netflix put grandma's cooking in the spotlight in "Nonnas," a 2025 movie inspired by New York City's Enoteca Maria, a restaurant that opened in 2007 with real-life Italian grandmas cooking dishes like lasagna and chicken cacciatore. Even cruise lines are riding the wave. AmaWaterways just introduced a new culinary experience, Cooking with Mamie, for its voyages on the Seine River in France. A French grandmother hops aboard to teach passengers how to make apple-packed tarte Tatin and madeleines.

Ahead, some of the best places around the world to find a bit of homestyle comfort, even if you're far from home.

Turkish delights

At Be endik Abi, Handan Kaygusuzer's homey, traditional cooking has added to the Turkish coastal town of Urla's reputation as a hot spot for gastronomy.

Kaygusuzer, a grandmother of three, opened the restaurant in 1999 with only five tables. These days, it fits 120 guests and often has a line out the door. "These recipes have been passed down through generations," she said of its menu. "If we do not continue them, they risk being forgotten."

Porcelain plates hang on the walls. Shelves hold jars of artichokes. Pans heave with labor-intensive dishes like çalkama, a Turkish pastry, and yaprak sarma, grapevine leaves filled by hand with a mixture of rice, onions, tomatoes and herbs.

"We cook in the same way we would at home -- without excess, without unnecessary complexity," said Kaygusuzer.

Egyptian homecooking, in Canada

Maha Barsoom's busy brunch spot in Toronto, Maha's, checks many grandma boxes: The place is full of knickknacks, she runs it with her two grown children and she learned many of the recipes from her own mother and grandmother. That's enough to overlook the technicality that she isn't a grandma -- yet. ("I can't wait," she said.)

The menu revolves around the food of Barsoom's native Egypt, where she lived before emigrating to Canada in 2000. Dishes include a lentil soup that she sells to-go in 1-liter jars.

"I cook the food as I cook at home for my kids, from the heart," said Barsoom, who, in semiretirement, often spends her days at the restaurant chatting to customers while her daughter, Monika Wahba, helms the kitchen.

Victor Huynh, a regular customer, often orders the Cairo Classic, a breakfast plate featuring fava beans that are cooked for 12 hours.

"It feels like a place where you go and someone asks, 'Did you eat yet?' " said Huynh. "Then they tell you what you're going to eat. Then they watch while you eat it."

A California casa

A rocking chair draped in a checkered Mexican apron greets guests on the porch of Abuela's Midtown, which occupies a Victorian house in Sacramento, Calif. Inside, an old sewing machine is tucked in the corner near photos of the staff's abuelas.

The scent of Mexican spiced coffee brewed in a clay pot wafts through the front room. Servers emerge from the kitchen carrying mismatched plates of chilaquiles and, on weekends, bowls of hominy-packed, spicy menudo soup that's spent at least six hours on the stove.

Decorating Abuela's Midtown before it opened last year was a joint effort. The cooks, servers and owners each added touches that reminded them of their abuelas' homes.

"We're not done yet," general manager Oscar Escobar said. "We're going to start a wall where customers can put up their own photos -- of their grandmas, of course."

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 11, 2026 06:00 ET (10:00 GMT)

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