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Dining in Vienna, Prague, Nuremberg and on the Romantic Road in Germany

Dining in Vienna, Prague, Nuremberg and on the Romantic Road in Germany

Old Oct 19th, 2008, 02:55 PM
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Dining in Vienna, Prague, Nuremberg and on the Romantic Road in Germany

Meals on our recent trip to Vienna, Prague, Nuremberg and the Romantic Road in Germany probably fell along a typical bell curve. A few truly outstanding (from both ends of the cost and classiness spectrum), a few minimally ok, and most in the middle, good to very good, competently served and tasty. Things have come a long way since our first trips to Vienna and these parts of Germany in the mid-70s when everything was sauerkraut, dumplings and pork. Several of our meals were truly gourmet and one was a Michelin 3 star, well worthy of that accolade.

Vienna meals
The best here ranged from the 3 star Steirereck to a beer hall to a buffet in Grinzing.

Treznewski
I'd always wanted to check this place out and never gotten the opportunity (besides I'm always a bit overwhelmed by large crowds that frequent a stand up place and not happy with eating upright rather than seated.) This time I was determined to try it, and arriving in Vienna at about 3 p.m. or so with only airplane food for two or three previous meals made the idea of a snack, even standing up, perfect in view of our pending reservation for an early dinner.

Treznewski immediately became my new favorite place to snack and we returned 2 or 3 times during our 6 day stay. It's a tiny little hole in the wall on a street just off the Graben (there's a big sign with an arrow you can see from the Graben). You can tell immediately that it's an institution. The waitresses have old fashioned waitress outfits, in yellow, with white trim, handkerchiefs in their pockets and those little white "waitress tiaras" on their heads. The whole thing is about a 10 foot long glass encased counter of open faced sandwiches mostly with chopped egg/mayo base and various accompaniments, e.g. herring, ham, olives, etc. There are about 25 or 30 different kinds and they all look and test scrumptious and at about a euro apiece they are a good buy.

We saw several people coming in to purchase take out packages and realized that for a mere 25 euros you could leave with a sample of their entire selection and were sorely tempted to do so. If I lived or was staying for any length of time in Vienna, I know how I could easily handle appetizers for any party or the works for a cocktail gathering.

There are only 3 or 4 actual tables to sit or even stand at (and another 3 standing tables on the street outside) so you'd best be prepared to eat up and move on if your eating here. There is no place to sit leisurely and savor your sandwich, but even gulping them is a treat. Especially if you purchase a "pfiff" to go with a 1/8 (I think) liter of beer in the cutest little steins ever. They're almost "ladylike" and I did, indeed, see several ladies of a certain age digging into their sandwiches and accompanying pfiffs with gusto.

This is a great, one of a kind, place. Worthy of a stop every time you go by and certainly of a detour and a special journey even if you stay way across town. I could be convinced to plan a whole trip just to partake of these tasty little tidbits.

Meinl am Graben
This was our first real meal in Vienna and while we were tired from our flight we enjoyed it very much. Though you walk through a deli (one of the best ever and quite beautiful) to get there, the restaurant is really quite romantic with dim lighting, cushiony banquettes in warm persimmon color and lovely views of the Graben from the windows. Be sure to ask for a window view whether you're seated directly in the window seats or not. The view is terrific and even more so if you're lucky enough to be there during the Christmas season when the lights on the Graben are twinkling in the snow.

This is one of Vienna's best restaurants and I am grateful to BTilke for tipping me off to it. Though it was a Thursday, I was a bit amazed that it was not filled while we were dining. When we'd eaten lunch there on New Year's Eve day a couple of years ago, the place was packed. Could be that they do a bigger lunch than dinner business. At any rate, if you're interested in dining there, I would nonetheless recommend reservations, though you can be seated at the bar without them.

Everything I had--warm sweetbreads and headcheese with mushroom appetizer, main of char with lardo and terrific cheese cart selections for dessert--was wonderful. As you would expect for a highly rated restaurant both the service and the bill were right up there as well.

Nordsee
This remains my all time favorite fast food place, alongside Treznewski which is more a snack place. We had lunch on day 2 (day 1 for our friends) at the Kartnerstrasse branch of this wonderful Austrian fish and seafood chain. I think there are many more branches throughout Vienna (those I know of are at the Naschmarkt and just off the Graben). I've also run into them in Garmisch and in Salzburg. They serve everything from herring sandwiches to pick up and eat on the street (probably the best of the best of their offerings) to whole lobster and everything in between, most ready on the counter to be picked up cafeteria style as you walk along with your tray. Besides the herring sandwich, I love their various seafood salads and always over order. Pricewise, this is not McDonald's but the food quality warrants the higher cost.

Geichenbeisl
This was dinner for our friends' first night in town and I wanted to give them the typical Vienna experience. I also wanted to hear some zither music so we booked specifically for the Zitherstuberl room. The rooms are cute but pretty chopped up, so we were actually seated in the room next to the one where the zitherist (right word?) was playing and we couldn't hear her all that well. At one point she did do the Third Man Theme so I was somewhat mollified but it wasn't the musical experience I was hoping for.

Without a really good dose of the music, we could have found a better place for a first Viennese meal. I had tafelspitzsulze for an appetizer (slices of a sort of jellied beef), followed by pork with cabbage and potatoes of some nondescript sort. Not an overwhelming success.

Other ok but not outstanding meals we had in Vienna were:
Palmenhaus- in the Palmenhaus of the Neue Hofberg just off the Burggarten. A trendy place utilizing the emperor's glassed in greenhouse serving fairly typical Viennese cuisine, tafelspitzsulz again with horseradish cream built into the top layer, followed by trout with boiled potatoes. An ok place if you're sightseeing in the area.

Witwe Bolte- in the cute little Spittalberg quarter not far from Museum quarter. Another small restaurant with multiple tiny rooms serving typical Viennese food for reasonable prices. Had beef broth with floating pancake shreds, and suckling pig with cabbage and potato dumplings, the day's specials.

Brandauer's Schlossbrau in Hietzing
Found this one in the Knopf Mapguide. It was a large, cavernous place reminiscent of an Octoberfest beerhall tent. They serve a daily buffet for 7.5 euros and it's a very good deal. Several tables of young local working men looked as if they might be eating up any chance the place had of making a profit on this well-priced offer. Among the items I picked up were gurkensalat, tomatoes with onion, warm potato salad, meatloaf, spareribs, chicken, pork, spaetzle, cheesy mashed potatoes, fried potato chunks and stroganoff gravy. By the time I'd tasted all of this, there was no room left to return to have more of my favorites. So much for a plan of attack. The Gruner Veltliner with which I washed it all down, was similarly plentiful and inexpensive.

Actually it's hard to categorize a meal like this. It was good, basic buffet fare (better than the franchise buffet stuff we have in the US) and at an incredibly reasonable price. While that doesn't make it one of our best meals, it sure makes it one of our best deals on this trip. OTOH, even as good a deal as it is, it's primary use for the tourist would only be as a great place to go for lunch after a trip to the Schoenbrunn Palace, which is how we happened to be there ourselves.
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Old Oct 19th, 2008, 03:01 PM
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Sorry. I had some trouble posting this. It's the second part to a report about our recent trip to vienna, Prague, Nuremberg and Wurzburg. The first part covers sightseeing and hotels and is labeled Trip Report: Vienna, Prague, Nuremberg and Wurzburg.
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Old Oct 19th, 2008, 03:06 PM
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More meals in Vienna:

Weingut Reinprecht
This is one of the largest Heurigers in Grinzing and it’s impossible not to have a good time there. We’ve eaten in at least two others, Mayer am Pfarrplatz (apparently actually in Heiligenstadt rather than Grinzing) and Wulff Heuriger, the whereabouts of which I am unsure. All were wonderful. Mayer might have somewhat better food, but Reinprecht has two advantages. It is easy to get to (one of the streetcars goes directly there without need for changes and drops you a block or so from the main street where it and lot of other Heurigers are) and I think you can be assured of music on all nights. The music makes the night. An accordionist and violinist played old favorites—American and Austrian—and requests for the entire time we were there. Everyone drank beer and sturm (new, slightly fizzy wine) and got mellow enough to sing along and some even danced—though there wasn’t much room for that. This is the kind of thing you go to Austria and Bavaria for and you can count on it at these places.

But the food isn’t bad either—quintessential German/Austrian offerings that will never leave you hungry and could probably fill you up for a week. Reinprecht offers the opportunity to order off a menu, but the real fun is to go to the counter where they dish it up deli style as you point. It’s a wonderful opportunity to try lots of stuff for very reasonable prices. Among other things we sampled pink pork fett spread (that’s fat or lard in English, but hey, what the heck), white asparagus in dill crème sauce, pork, ribs, gulasch over spaetzle, red sausage, white sausage, apple strudel, apple tart.

If travel dining is judged by memories, this was an A+ and might have been called our best meal in Vienna.

Steirereck
Competing with our Grinzing experience at Reinprecht for best meal was this 3 Michelin starred temple of gastronomy totally at the other end of the dining spectrum---and probably 10 times more in price. It’s kind of hard to make that all even out but somehow it does if you have eclectic tastes.

I’d read about Steirereck for a long time and somehow resisted scheduling a meal there, primarily because it had been in an area outside the Ring and a bit more difficult to get to than other options, and because somehow Vienna and 3 star dining just didn’t seem to go together in my mind, seeing the city as fixated on pork and sauerkraut as the Viennese dining staples.

We had, however, promised our friend who was traveling with us a 3 star dinner as a treat for her 50th birthday, so it seemed to fit and I booked it. It was fantastic. Beautiful, understated and yet over the top. The restaurant has moved into an old dairy building on the Danube canal in the Stadtpark and so, is no longer difficult to get to for a late night dinner. The decorative theme of the place is leaves—apparently from the trees of Styria, the province of Austria to which the place is tied. The ceiling has plaster leaves falling from it, there are shadows of leaves on the walls and there are gold covered leaf “statues” at various places. Everything is quite modern without being oppressively so (except for the bathrooms which have multi colored flower themes that seem overly playful for a place of such otherwise understated good taste.)

Service was pleasant, helpful and at times just too much, but that, too, gave us something to remark upon. Our young and very upright waiter, wore white gloves when serving us. He knew everything about everything and he wanted desperately to share all that knowledge with us. I was torn between alternately wanting to slap him up side the head and tell him to just relax a little and to take him home with us to forever jump to my every beck and call.

We ordered the tasting menu with accompanying wine selections. At 115 euros per person for the food and 63 per person for the accompanying wine, this was certainly the most expensive meal of the trip. OTOH everything is relative and these prices for truly 3 star food, ambience and service, were reasonable and even on the low side when compared to places like Per Se in NYC, French Laundry in Yountville, and Pierre Gagnaire in Paris.

In addition to each listed course, there were at least two and possibly more amuses. The listed courses came accompanied with a card completely detailing the dish and all its ingredients. I kept the cards to make writing this report easier, but will only detail the full list for one of the courses to give an idea of what is involved (to do it for all would have me typing for a week.) Besides the actual courses, we were twice invited to select from among the 10 or so different breads and rolls on offer. I couldn’t resist the one incorporating little chunks of blood pudding. It was good.

Here’s what we had to the best of my ability to recall and type from my pre-printed notes.

Course 1—Marinated alpine salmon with Tahiti vanilla, corn, eggplants and sugar melon
Off to a bad start. This was the only thing DH and I ordered that really didn’t work. For all that stuff, it had no real taste. We wished we’d ordered the first course that our friends did: Spring chicken with buttermilk, cucumber, porcini and lettuce. It had them drooling.

Course 2—Graved and grilled eel with paprika, lovage and chamomile. This redeemed the chef. DH loves eel and this was very good eel. Here’s what else the card told us was in the dish:
Sour cream, oranges, thyme, salt and sugar graved eel, grilled with lime breadcrumbs
Braised paprika with onions, rosemary, salt, garlic, white pepper and sugar
Lovage, potato fond
Salted chamomile butter
Red Indian pepper

The card also explained that their eel comes from Lake Neusiedl/ Burgenland in Austria
Whew. All that and I scarfed it down in about 3 bites. And I used to complain about cooking all day to prepare a thanksgiving meal and having it be over in 30 minutes. I’d be cooking this for a week and it would be gone in a minute. I think I understand why prices on this kind of dining get to be so high.

Our friends opted for the crispy deer calf strudel with young pumpkin, blue gin sabayone and fig

Course 3—Steamed brown trout with mangold and calendula
Talk about eating flowers. This included an ice crystal salad of the marigold, and various creams and butters prepared from calendula, another flower. Interesting, and even tasty if a bit esoteric. Our friends had the grilled whitefish with runner beans and lobster.

Course 4—Gently grilled saddle of lamb with pistachios, parsnips and physalis—the main course we all had though done to our differing tastes.

Course 5—The cheese cart, an incredible rolling trolley of all good cheesy offerings, some pretty standard, some pretty exotic, all lovingly cared for and presented. The cheese waiter was magnificent. He managed to take the various selections we each made, arrange them in an appropriate order and instruct us to eat them in that order. If I could start my life over and be anything I wanted to be, I’d no longer dream of becoming a ballerina as I did as a child, but would want to be the cheese steward in a 3 star restaurant in Europe. What a great job.

Course 6—We all ended with chocolate salad with mushroom plant, lemon cupcake, parasol sugar and eggnog frappe. Among other things, our cards informed us that this dish used Kendari chocolate with a cocoa content of 60%, harvested in South America with a perfect balance of sweet and bitter and sour flavors. Whoda thunk it?

Ok, ok, ok. This may be too much information about your food. It may be better just to know that all except the ill-fated marinated alpine salmon tasted good, was beautifully plated and nicely presented—and well-received by the birthday girl and her attendants.

We arrived at 8 p.m. and left around midnight. It takes time to serve and eat such a meal. It was memorable—so was the Reinprecht Heuriger in Grinzing, just a little different.

Zum Weissen Rauchfangkehrer (the White Chimney Sweep)
This place was about in the middle between the Grinzing Heuriger Reinprecht and the 3 star Steirereck. The place is pretty traditional Viennese with small, cozy rooms, comforting but updated classics, and it has quiet, live piano music. Some in our party ordered ala carte, but the birthday girl and I went for the menu. At 50 euros it was an excellent value, starting with an amuse of lardo with spinach, tomatoes and olives—sort of Greek salad with slices of fett, then creamy mushroom soup, then really good tafelspitz with roesti potatoes and a coat of horseradish cream baked over sticks of carrot, rutabaga and turnip, followed by what they called “the tiniest island” of Salzburger Knockerl accompanied by cranberry sorbet. Vienna in a nutshell with a bow to the 21st Century.

When we left they gave us little gift packages, including one of roasted pumpkin seeds. In the fall, all of Vienna and the Rauchfangkehrer in particular, seems to have some kind of obsession with pumpkin seeds. You see them on lots of menus, along with pumpkin soup and lots of other things pumpkin. One of our party ordered the pumpkin soup on a couple of occasions and was quite happy with it. Look for it if you’re there in the fall.

Indochine 21
This was my planned attempt to get ahead of my husband’s usual strike for Chinese food when we’re eating a steady diet of one country’s food on a trip. I read about this place in the trendy restaurant guide that also directed us to the Palmenhaus. I figured if we had to have Chinese/Asian, we might at least get good décor into the bargain. Turns out we also got good food.

The chef is apparently one of some repute in Vienna (name is Bogger, writes cookbooks, probably has a tv show) and he does good, if spicy food with a decidedly modern look. I had shrimp mousse lollipops on lemongrass sticks, the shredded, reformed duck in very thick, sweetish brown sauce with tofu blobs. Even the tofu, something I’d never order, was good. DH had ribs with salt, chicken coconut curry soup, and cold fresh spring rolls. Our friends had some dishes that were spicy enough to bring tears to their eyes, but they seemed to be enjoying their pain.
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Old Oct 19th, 2008, 03:10 PM
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Prague

We only had 5 meals in Prague compared to 11 in Vienna. None reached the levels of either Reinprecht or Steirereck, but we did have some good food there—and one bad experience returning to a place we’d loved on another visit.

U Pinkasu
This was the best of Prague IMO. It’s billed as a beer hall and that’s what it is—if you are willing to sit in the smoking section. We opted for the non-smoking section and were, instead, seated in a second story small room that seemed more like a private home’s dining room than a beer hall. The food, was however, truly beer hall. Hearty, tasty and perfect with beer.

We started with a shared cold meat plate with lard and scrapings (they do such good things with fett), head cheese, and sausage in sour. Also had cucumber salad, sauerkraut, red cabbage, pork, ham—all incredibly tasty, but the best of all was a meat strudel, all rolled up and baked with a cheese crust over the top. This was great food, for a little beer hall price.

Rhyb Tri
This is a fish restaurant behind Tyn church that we’d eaten at on a previous trip. The food was excellent though service was slow and the prices high, especially for lunch.

Monarch wine bar
We were trying to get into another place on the same street as this and when our restaurant of choice had no room for us, we opted for this place which is one of at least two and possibly more places in town owned by the Monarch wine people. We were still full from our fish lunch so the relatively small menu of small plates that accompanies the wine bar theme worked well for us. I started with pate and then had pork steak in rosemary and garlic, not as heavy as many of our other meals.

The place featured cheeses on a blackboard menu and when I saw tete de moine, the nutty Swiss cow’s milk cheese that is usually served in little thin cut “cabbage roses,” I insisted that we have it—and made two more converts to this delightful gourmet treat.

Décor was fairly typical wine bar, dark furnishings, some tall tables, ornate mirrors, blackboards, etc. but the fun thing was a giant chandelier made of wine glasses with lights placed at various points within the mass of them. Unique and very apropos.

We had another meal in Prague at a place we found in a guidebook up on Castle Hill, good enough but not so good that I need to detail its contents or look up its name for you. You’ll either run into it or not. You’ll be fine either way.

Seven Angels
This was the restaurant of the hotel we’d stayed in on a previous visit. We’d dined there and loved it and so I scheduled it for our last meal in Prague. Success seems to have spoiled the place. It was a really dismal experience and I’d been expecting such fun.

When we’d been there previously, we’d been seated in the room where the music group plays—strings and some kind of Austro-Hungarian giant dulcimer-like instrument that’s played with hammers softened with strips of cloth. They are an interesting group that tend to become increasingly animated as the night wears on and the result is a fun time.

This time we were ushered into the other room, across from the one where the music is and while the room is prettily decorated, we couldn’t hear the music well. To make matters worse, we were seated at a table directly in front of a roaring fire. Luckily there was another table available to move us to or we’d have had to have left. It was just too hot to eat comfortably there and, of course, no way to turn the fire down since it was real.

We took all of this in stride but couldn’t forgive the incredibly slow service. Upon being seated we were immediately offered smoked fish appetizers but then waited more than an hour and a half, maybe even two, for our main courses. Other diners around us were having similar problems obtaining their food. When we finally quizzed our waiter about it, he became defensive and provided no useful information whatsoever. When the food finally arrived, it was good, but by then the mood was bad, bordering on ugly and the experience was spoiled beyond redemption. Just too bad—for us, for the restaurant, for the other diners still waiting for their food when we left.

So what had been a place I’d have heartily recommended after our first visit, became a place I could not, in any good conscience, recommend again.

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Old Oct 19th, 2008, 03:15 PM
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Dining in Germany

In my report of sights and hotels from this trip, I already covered the wonderful buffet we had at the Meridien Hotel in Nuremberg. It was one of the best upscale buffets I’ve ever experienced and I recommend it highly.

We had another Chinese meal in Nuremberg since I could hardly deny DH when the place was right across the street from our hotel and looked rather nice for that genre. Pretty is as pretty does and this one didn’t do too well by us. It was ok, but just.

Heilig-Giest-Spital
We also ate a beer hall meal in Nuremberg, and it was a good one. Heilig-Geist-Spital was built as the refectory of the city hospital—the one that’s built over the river, and where the wife of a Latvian friend of my husband’s was actually born while her parents were fleeing Latvia after the Second World War. It’s now a very large, cheerful beer hall where among other things I had the best green beans of my life, so far. They were cooked in bacon fett with onions and chopped ham chunks. Yum. They accompanied a dish of three types of meat and bacon and Nuremberg sausages with fried potatoes and a fried egg on top of it all. Ms. Piggy here adored it.

Opatija
When booking for Nuremberg, I found a Michelin 2 star in the city (Essigbratlein) and tried to reserve there. They were full on the only night they were open while we were there, so I searched the net to try to find another place of gourmet stature in town and came up with a Croatian place called Opatija. I didn’t book ahead, but we stopped for lunch on a Sunday and were lucky enough to find it open and available to serve us. The weather was nice so we opted for outside dining but the place had a nice interior as well.

I started with a salad of arugula, balsamic and parmesan with taste of lamb. Next came a plate of fabulous oysters. We were expecting mushrooms but our German or Croatian is not so good, and we wound up with oysters. They were some of the best I’ve had in a long time, gigantic, meaty and very, very fresh. For a main I opted for the Opatija plate, which came with shish kebob, cevapittci (Croatian meat balls, which are really more like meat sticks, peppers and other things Croatian—and very tasty. If returning to Nuremberg, I’d certainly stop again. It’s in the heart of old town, not far from the river.

Alte Mainbrucke
Our evening dining for one night in Wurzburg was at our hotel, the Rebstock, as explained in my review of sights and hotels on another post. It was very traditional and very good. We also ate another evening meal in the city at the Alte Mainbrucke, a place built directly onto the saints bridge crossing the river Main. It has rustic but new construction which leaves open to view many of the girders that holds the thing in place. Lights are low and while it has a little bit of an industrial feel, it’s also somewhat romantic.

DH had trout mousse, crayfish soup and sulzed pork. I tempted fate and ordered steak tartare with multiple accompaniments so I could mix my own to my taste—cool looking and very good. This was followed by dorade with salad, both excellent. I would definitely return to this place. Great service by a young staff too. N.B. I was able to book this place by internet from their website while in the US.

Two other meals we had on the German part of our trip were on the road--in Bamberg and in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Both were very good.

Messerschmidt
This is a restaurant with rooms where we’d eaten years ago in Bamberg on a previous
trip. It was famous then and maintained high standards. They have not flagged since. Everything was well kept and the food was excellent. The young lady who served us was well-schooled in her craft/art and handled everything with aplomb.

While the Bamberg Rotary dined in another room and a Japanese tour group took up residence in a third, we were seated in a lovely yellow room that looked out onto the garden and trout holding pond and had a porch-like feel, along with a couple of small groups of local businessmen. DH had a two eel meal and he was in heaven. Creamed eel soup was followed by eel in dill sauce. I had a more conventional mushroom soup with herbed dumpling followed by char with crispy skin over braised celery and potatoes gratin. One of the best meals of the trip.

Mittermaier in Rothenberg
We lucked into this place. As we were driving around trying to find a place to park our vehicle while we explored the town, I saw a sign on a building advertising that within was the establishment of a member of the Jeunes Restaurateurs d’Europe—a stylized blue plate with red knife and fork. Sort of like looking for the symbols of Michelin or the Chaine de Rotissiers, etc.

We first learned of this association of striving under 45 year old chefs who appear to be trying to bring new ideas (within reason) to the cooking of their chosen area/regions, small towns, etc. while stymied for a decent place to eat in a small town in France somewhere. We loved that place, not only for being there in the midst of an otherwise culinary desert, but also for the wonderful food we were served. As I left I picked up a book featuring all the members of the association that year with info about their restaurants. I’ve used it to search for restaurants on subsequent trips but for some reason hadn’t consulted it for this trip.

But the minute I saw the sign, I knew where I wanted to go for lunch and after touring the terminally cute little town, that’s exactly what we did. This is a hotel and restaurant, outside the walls of the town, with a sort of casual, almost cape cod like vibe, with distressed chartreuse painted furniture, and old/new looking art objects here and there, small rooms and even tables set up in what appear to actually be hallways. Tables were set with tall silver candlesticks and daisies. It’s comfortable and fun but in a classy way. And the food and service were excellent.

We started with an amuse of white tomato mousse on pumpernickel with wasabi caviar and herring, then a salad with horseradish vinaigrette over apple and octopus, then mushroom soup with herb dumplings, and a main of freshwater bass, cauliflower in polenta cheese sauce with what appeared to be steak sauce over that—weird but very good. Before dessert we had a cheese plate of one blue and two cow cheeses with a regional red wine. Otherwise we drank sekt (the German equivalent of champagne) throughout the meal and with the dessert of ice cream in a crisp with chocolate. This three course (and amuses) lunch was only 30 euros, and worth considerably more.

I commend not only Mittermaier in Rothenberg ob der Tauber to you, but all members of the Jeunes Restauurateurs d’Europe as well. It’s a great little association whose members are always “up and comers” to be watched. Their guidebook says that their restaurants can be booked by internet, something I always like when planning trips outside the country. Check them out at www.jre.eu.

Summing it up
So this trip afforded us a combination of traditional, old world heavy German meals with pork, gravy and dumplings and a look at the new exciting spins chefs in the area are putting on those traditions. There was plenty of variety, lots of gemutlikheit (sp?), and some wonderful dishes. We were happy most of the time at table, have good memories of where and what we ate, and look forward to doing it again, the sooner the better.
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Old Oct 20th, 2008, 06:42 AM
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Topping to be sure Jenblase sees this information for her upcoming trip.
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Old Oct 20th, 2008, 07:17 AM
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Thanks, Julie!! I was so happy to spot this on this dreary Monday morning!
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