508 words on Food
My parents came by which opened the opportunity for a rather nice meal without me spending time in the kitchen. Instead we went to the Schillingshof ten kilometres down the road which is said to be one of the best restaurants of the region.
And indeed, the food was rather nice with a lot of fancy things finding their way to our table. This started with some little ‘greetings’ from the chef one of which included a rather nice thin slice of beef which they introduced as Tafelspitz. Then I shared starters with my dad – a crayfish sausage and a pescaccio (haha clever, for fish carpaccio) from yellow fin tuna. For my taste there was too much sauce beneath the tuna, making it hard to taste much of the fish which seemed a bit sad. I still can’t make up my mind whether the very idea of making a crayfish sausage with a Thai curry sauce – in the spirit of good old German Currywurst – is incredibly tacky or incredibly cool. I thought it was fun anyway and the taste was fine as well, although possibly a bit too close to the ‘original’.
As a main dish I had a fish called ‘Skrei’ from Norway. Apparently it is a kind of cod that is only caught in winter as linefish. It was really firm and extremely nice to eat. And it was served on a bed of chorizo puree – which in my general fancy of that sausage has to count as a brilliant idea. Particularly as it was well executed in the sense that it did have that special chorizo taste without being so strong that it killed the taste of the fish. As vegetable there were thin slices of kohlrabi. Rather unusual as well, but a good idea.
And then came the dessert. Quite out of tune with my sweet teeth I went for the ‘lasagne’ of pear with goat’s cheese. I had expected that dish to come baked with the cheese (slightly) molten, but it was mainly a stack of layers of pear and cheese, so I was a bit disappointed. The cheese was rather nice, but the pear could have been a bit sweeter for my taste. Still a very cool idea, I just wonder where I can find an equally mild and nice goat’s cheese now.
There were a few downsides as well. First and foremost the people at the next table with their loud and unfunny conversation. And the service – while friendly – felt a bit rural as well (not all that surprisingly, perhaps, as we were in the countryside. A bit too much joking and laughing. A bit too much arguing. But at least enough humour to actually make jokes about their own stupid (or at least hard to use) fancy crockery and cutlery which they used for the starters. The fact that they’re a non-smoking place without a reasonably nice smoking area didn’t go down too well either.
Good ingredients but otherwise a mixed bag, I say.