Wednesday 14 October 2009

Boo in Germany - Gasthof Neuwirt

Thomas hails from Garching, a picture perfect small town on the outskirts of Munich. This is home for the duration of our Oktoberfest visit and one of the local eateries is Gasthof Neuwirt, a recently improved (so I'm told) small traditional guest house with a restaurant on the ground floor.


Fearing for our lives somewhat as conkers the size of tennis balls fell from the surrounding trees onto our table and all around us, we each ordered lunch from the biergarten menu, sat outside in the October sun, those of us with strong constitutions ordered a beer, I stuck to the water.

I have been keen for some time now to try Käsespätzle, a German speciality of micro dumplings shaped from a dough by being dropped into a pan forming small irregular lumps, cooked with fried onions and strong cheese. Each serving came in a cast iron pan. It was wickedly rich and filling and just what my aching, hungover body needed to recover from the previous day at Oktoberfest.


Each meal comes with a salad, diners help themselves at the salad bar. Some were less keen on this than I was due to the fact that all the veggies are pickled, it included carrot, beetroot, cauliflower, a bean salad. It reminded me of a Pizza Hut salad cart but that comparison is perhaps too harsh. This was fresher and actually tasted of something.

Other dishes sampled included the classis pork schnitzel and fries, a salmon pasta, leberknoedelsuppe, and some sausages, hurruh! I managed to not have any wurst for the entirety of the stay which is a shame, I love the stalls at the food market in the centre of Munich but this time I opted for Leberkase instead.

Gasthof Neuwirt is a nice quaint little eatery serving traditional Bavarian specialities , in the coming years I hope to sample all of them. German food is a fairly hefty cuisine, with an emphasis on meat and potatoes, very comforting and full of flavour. Not dissimilar to our national dishes in essence.

Gasthof Neuwirt
Münchener Str.10
85748 Garching
6/10

3 comments:

Kavey said...

Oddly enough, I am in Germany right now and have also tried that käsespätzle earlier in the week. Mine came in the same balti-like dish with cheese mixed in and baked crispy towards the edges of the dish, plus pork medallions in mushroom sauce on top! This is definitely what my brain considers to be winter food.

Boo said...

Ooh brilliant! The pork and mushroom additions sound great, they do love their meat in Germany! Partly why I like it there so much. Enjoy your visit Kavey.

Helen said...

I tried making spätzle a while ago and it is seriously difficult to make without a special tool. I made a right mess. I tried pushing it through a colander, a grater and finally ended up just picking bits off with my hands. Totally worth it though - love the stuff.