Many chefs would be content to make one splash a year. Not, apparently, Kurt Gutenbrunner, who opened Thor to loud applause in September, and followed it up in December with Blaue Gans. The new bistro took over the space that, until last year, was Le Zinc, the casual ready-to-wear offshoot of Chanterelle. Now Blaue Gans plays the equivalent role in the Gutenbrunner empire.

Blaue Gans (“blue goose”) shares little of Thor’s clever charisma. It’s a demi-casual bistro serving traditional Austrian and German cooking, with none of the culinary or decorative elaborations that typify Mr. Gutenbrunner’s higher-end places. The space itself has hardly been altered since its Zinc days. There are no tablecloths, service can be spotty, and the quonset-shaped room takes on a mess-hall feel as it gets louder.

The cooking sticks closely to classic recipes, but shows a lighter, perhaps more vegetable-friendly version of the cuisine than one might find in Austria. Nonetheless, three sausages merit their own section on the small menu. Bratwurst ($9), with its familiar light porkiness, and burenwurst ($9), a coarser boiled Viennese favorite, both come with fine-textured sauerkraut and hot mustard. Paler weisswurst, accompanied by just one of the house pretzels, completes the three-way tie for best wurst.

Blood sausage ($11) is a different beast, and falls under the vorspeisen (appetizers) category instead. Crumbly and near-black, fried with potato chunks into a grainy hash of concentrated savor, then piled onto sauerkraut, it’s one of the best things on the menu. Offal fans will also appreciate the rindsuppe,a thin but hearty beef broth that plays host to a bevy of tiny carrots and one delightful calves’ liver dumpling, browned on the outside, fluffy inside, and with the permeating flavor of liver. A pate of smoked trout ($12) has lush flavor, spread on the house brown bread or just forked whole into the mouth. Sweet beets and horseradish complement it excellently.

Main courses fall in the $20-$25 range and include a couple of fish and even a vegetable strudel, but such things smack of TriBeCa and sell Austria short. It’s far better to opt for a savory goulash ($22), dark and glossy as black coffee, and rife with tender hunks of beef (or, one night, venison) big enough to require a knife. Onions and mushrooms add intensity and a little sweetness to the stew, while superlight, velvety spaetzle balances out the heartiness. Two types of schnitzel are offered, which keeps someone in the kitchen busy flattening pork. Wiener schnitzel ($24) is the familiar breaded-and-fried type. The pork is as light and delicate as anything on the menu, with a crisp and coherent breading, but a somewhat retiring flavor that a squeeze of lemon helps to coax out. A sultry vinegar-and-dill potato salad almost overpowers the meat.

Jaeger schnitzel ($24) provides an education by contrast. This piggy is unbreaded but hardly nude: A light cream sauce gives it just the right amount of heft, and pieces of mushroom and bacon provide a marvelous depth of flavor that the other schnitzel lacks. This dish, too, includes spaetzles, which turn into creamy little marvels as they sop up the sauce. The lesson of this schnitzel – that crisper is not necessarily better – is profound. Diners seeking a crisp-fried experience might be best served not by the Wiener schnitzel but by a classic fried chicken, Vienna-style. Backhendl ($20) is not battered but breaded, giving its surface a dark-brown crunch and its meat an outstanding succulence: It’s rare for chicken to taste this deliciously chickeny, and a lingonberry relish brings out even more flavor.

Although Austrian cuisine is not renowned in America, its desserts are, and the ones at Blaue Gans (all $8) don’t disappoint. Salzburger nockerl is a triple mound of cloud-like souffle with a golden crust, sweetened to a turn (you can even feel the sugar grains’ crunch) and inflated atop a tart huckleberry jam. The nockerl’s closest competitor is Kaiserschmarrn, an eggy pancake dotted with raisins. It’s pre-torn into steaming wedges, to allow for easy dipping into the cold apple stew that comes with it.

To drink, Blaue Gans offers several prime beers on tap, including a golden Hacker-Pschorr ale ($7) and Paulaner’s hearty hefeweizen ($7). Not many wines are offered – four by the glass and a handful more by the bottle – but at least they’re predominantly Austrian. Hans Lang’s dry riesling ($9/$34) stands out for its suppleness and versatility, whereas a young “heuriger” gruner veltliner ($8/$32) is crisp but thin. The list still wants a little calibrating, and would benefit from a few lower-priced bottles. As it stands, most tables seem to order by the glass.

Mr. Gutenbrunner has no fear of creative heights: The remarkable attainments at his other restaurants testify to that. But here he shows a knack for vernacular cooking, too, which can be just as transporting.

Blaue Gans, 139 Duane St., between West Broadway and Church Street, 212-571-8880.