Goldener Hecht

I've been really looking forward to eating at the Goldener Hecht. My coworker raves about it. Jason raves about it. I've read nothing but good reviews about it. I had to see for myself if it's as good as they say it is.

I walked in and wanted to get a seat at the bar since I was dining alone but the bar area was packed. The rest of the restaurant was nearly empty though. I plopped down at a corner table and studied the menu.

I was surprised to see that they didn't have a large selection of beer. I was basically forced to order a Heidelberger. The waitress assumed I wanted a pils, but I learned my lesson and ordered the dunkel weiss. I don't know if it's because I'm American, female or just most people in general prefer a pils, but they always assume that that's what I want. During the trip I realized I really don't like pilsners at all.

I really wanted to try the cheese spaetzle since Jason constantly raves about it. But I was in a carniverous mood and the spaetzle didn't come with any meat. And unfortunately, you can't get it as a side. I opted for the wiener schnitzel. The best wiener schnitzel I've had. Lightly breaded, tender and juicy. The potato salad it came with was kickin' too. I think if I lived in Germany, I'd be eating potato salad day in and day out. So good.

My only complaint is the bread. It was kind of stale. So to sum it up, limited beer selection, bad bread, but awesome food. Ideally, next time I can go with a dining companion who's willing to split the cheese spaetzle and a meat dish with me. Jason's got me curious. Though I can't imagine any spaetzle tasting better than what I had at Zum Franziskaner.

Pinte @ the Marriott

It was pouring outside so I decided to head down to Pinte, a restaurant/bar at the hotel. I started with a cold refreshing Kostritzer. Kostritzer is a black lager and looks dark and rich like a dunkel weiss, but lacks a little in the flavor department. Still, it hit the spot.

I was trying to be healthy since I had just worked out so I decided to get the spargel salad. I asked the waitress about the size of the salad just to make sure it was enough for a full meal and she said it was. I was really looking forward to the salad. You can't go wrong with spargel since it's in season and I was envisioning something similar to those tasty looking salads my neighbors had at Cafe Journal earlier in the day.

The salad came and no sign of white asparagus. I asked the waitress if spargel meant white asparagus and she corrected me and told me white asparagus is spargel weiss. Hmm, okay. Maybe I was mistaken and the other times I ordered asparagus it was listed as spargel weiss. So I chomped down on my salad and was disappointed. The salad was no where as good as I was expecting.

Realizing that the salad wasn't going to fill me up, I called the waitress over and ordered the hungarian goulash soup. The soup was cute. It came in a cute little bread bowl and some more in a cup right beside. The soup was good, but nothing spectacular. A spiced up tomato soup with bits of meat is what it was. Definitely better than the salad.

Overall, this was probably the most disappointing meal out of the entire trip. The spargel salad still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. The rest of my time in Heidelberg, I made an effort to look at menus where they had spargel specials and all of them just said spargel. "Weiss" never made an appearance on any of the menus. I was duped.

Cafe Journal

My first meal alone in Heidelberg was at Cafe Journal. It's Memorial Day and I had the day off while Jason was busy at work. The plan for the day was to go to the Heidelberg Castle, shop for some souveneirs and do some more sightseeing. But I woke up late so I was looking for a quick, casual place along the Hauptstrasse to give myself enough time to wander leisurely around the Castle.

The waitress came by quickly and I ordered a coffee and asked for the English menu. I wanted some more typical German fare so I passed on the long list of sandwiches and salads and ordered the veal meatballs with potato and side salad.


The veal meatballs were juicy and burst with flavor but was a tad on the oily side. The potatoes were nicely fried and unlike the meatballs, not oily at all. I think the salad is there solely to make you feel like you're eating something nutritious. It's still pretty damn tasty. The picture does it more justice than my brief description.

The two guys next to me ordered salads that looked really good. Tons of veggies and other good stuff. Some of the biggest salads I've seen. I bet a lot of the food there is really good, but only go if you have a lot of time on your hands. The waitresses are busting their butts, but they don't stop to ask if you need anything unless you wave them down.

Thanner

On our way to the Philosopher's Walk, Jason and I stopped at Thanner for brunch. It was a nice day out and we decided to sit outside and soak in the scenery. It was about half way through our meal when we realized the tables across the street also belonged to the restaurant. I've never seen anything like that in New York. Pretty cool and why the heck not?

The bread was brought out while we were deciding on our food and if the bread was any indication on how the rest of the food was going to be, we definitely did good by picking this place. They served some of the freshest bread I've tasted in awhile.

We ordered two soups and one main dish and had it all come out at once. Jason loves the cream soups in Germany so he insisted we have the "tomatencreme mit basilikum". It was definitely unlike any tomato cream soup I've ever had. It had a bit more sweet than normal, it had tang, and it wasn't too creamy.


We also ordered another soup, "gemüsebrühe mit maultaschenstreifen", a vegetable soup with pancake strips. It tasted a lot like chicken noodle soup except the chicken was subbed with vegetables and the noodles were subbed with pancake strips. Nothing too exciting here.


For something with more substance, I suggested we order the "schwäbische maultaschen mit speck, gedünsteten zwiebeln und salat". It was almost like a ravioli with ground veal inside and cooked with onions and bacon. The pasta skin was a little thicker than a ravioli and was definitely stuffed more. Amazing! And the simple side salad that came with it was really good too.

Post-Drinking Grub, Mandy's to the Rescue (Sort Of)

Our first night in Heidelberg, we found ourselves at several bars getting our drink on. Jason and I were sitting outside having dinner at Vetter when Casey spotted us and joined us for a few. We all had just napped at the hotel before heading out so we were revved up to go and headed over to the Cave for something more lively. The Cave was a cool place and played good American music (which is played in most bars and clubs in Heidelberg). The beer selection at the Cave sucked though. They had a Heidelberger pils in bottle and a Jever in bottle. I didn't do the ordering, but from what I was told, that was about it for beers. What a shame.

We later made our way to Sonderbar. This place was a lot of fun and we lucked out with a booth by the bar. On their menu was a full page or two of absinthe shots. Casey and Jason had one that consisted of over 70% alcohol. I passed and boy, am I glad I did. I tasted a drop of Jason's and felt a burning sensation in my mouth. I'm not sure how they survived a whole shot of that stuff. It was foul.

It was past 3AM when we decided to head out for some grub to bring back to the hotel. We grabbed a cab and headed over to Mandy's. The last time Jason was in Heidelberg, Frank brought him to Mandy's for some after hours grub. It's basically a fast food joint where you can get burgers, fries and all the other typical fast food type stuff. Frank thought they were the best burgers, but Jason thought they were one of the worst things he's ever eaten. Despite that, he recommended we go since it was the only place we knew of that was still open.

Casey and I got a hamburger and fries and Jason the heidelburger. Pretty bad hamburger. The patty was spiced with something that seemed off to me. The ketchup was different, a little sweeter. The heidelburger tasted good compared to the hamburger because it was like a big mac knock off where there was some sort of thousand island like dressing on it. But, I still wouldn't say it's a good burger. Jason seemed to like it this time around though. The absinthe probably killed a couple of his tastebuds. Still, it wasn't so bad that it stopped us from making a couple of late night trips later on in the week. I guess when given a choice between no food and bad food after a long night of drinking, I'll opt for bad food. I need something to sop up all the alcohol.

Mall Lunching in Rohrbach

The days when I had to go into the office, Sigrun and I went to the mall nearby for lunch. She liked it there because of the variety of places we could choose from. The problem was, it took us both a while to decide where to eat because I think both of us wanted the other one to choose.

The first day, we went to the crepe place because they had a special spargel crepe with ham and cheese. Not very good. The ham and cheese masked the flavors of the spargel and the crepe didn't seem like it was cooked enough.

The second day, we bought a sandwich from Nordsee and brought it back to the office. Nordsee is a fish/seafood chain place and even though another German colleague said this was a god aweful place, I liked my sandwich a lot. I got the shrimp and egg salad sandwich because it looked like the best out of the bunch. It was a baguette with egg salad smeared on the bottom with pieces of whole shrimp laid on top. Darn good. A good number of the sandwiches looked like a fish filet, but I stayed away from those because I was envisioning a MickeyD's fish filet. In retrospect, I think I should've tried it and made a comparison between the two. I'm kind of curious about it now.

Third and last day of mall lunching was at this doner place. I was trying to avoid this place like the plague, but Sigrun wanted to go so I complied. I'm not a fan of lamb. I'm not a fan of anything that tastes gamey. So, I was desperately looking for other meat options on the menu, but the darn thing was in German and I don't think there were any anyway. I ordered the regular doner sandwich. It came in a pita with meat, veggies and the white sauce. Sandwich was incredibly tasty. Definitely the best lunch of the three.

The one thing that stood out as being consistently good was the bread that came with the sandwiches. Maybe I got lucky and ate at places that had really good, fresh tasting bread. Or maybe all the bread I get with my sandwiches here in the US are just plain crap. The "gourmet" sandwiches here probably have better bread, but it's hard to justify paying $10 for a sandwich. It especially sucks when good bread seems like it's standard in Germany.

Backhaus Backerei

I spotted Backhaus Backerei at the mall during my first day at the Rohrbach office and it's been my go to place for breakfast every morning. It was a bit of a challenge communicating with the people who worked behind the counter because they spoke limited English. So my first morning there, I just pointed at the pretzel.

Pretzels aren't normal breakfast fare, at least not in the US, but I thought it'd be a shame if I left Germany without trying a pretzel. And oh man, am I glad I did. The exterior is a dark brown color and was slightly firm and crisp while the interior is white and extremely soft and fluffy. Hands down, this was the best pretzel I've ever had. Granted, my limited experience with pretzels have mostly been with street vendors in NYC where it's over salted, chewy and slightly stale. So, it's not very hard for this German pretzel to claim best of in the pretzel category, but I don't imagine it being dethroned very easily.

The other mornings I opted for more traditional breakfast fare and ordered croissants. I'm not a big croissant eater because they're normally too greasy and fatty for me, but all other options were either coated with something sticky or something with icing. They offered two different croissants. A butter croissant and what I think they called a "lager" croissant. I tried googling it when I got back to the office, but the search didn't return anything. I tried plugging in "lager" on freetranslation.com and it returned the same word, lager. Maybe it's beer? Can croissants be made with beer? Maybe. Or maybe I just misread the sign. The lager croissant was darker in color, kind of like a lager, and less buttery with absolutely no taste of beer. It was my favorite of the two, but both croissants were really good. They were both fresh, light and not too greasy. I always look at my fingers when I'm eating a croissant to see how much grease I'm shoving into my body and it's nice to see there hardly was any.

Vetter

After a refreshing nap at the hotel, Jason and I took a stroll down to Bizmarckplatz looking for a place to drink and have dinner. We randomly walked into a restaurant and decided to have a few beers first at the bar. This was where I had my first Heidelberger beer. I forgot if I ordered a weissen or a pils, but whatever it was, I thought this beer was probably going to be the worst one I'll have during my trip. While I can't say confidently whether or not it was the worst, it was down there. I really didn't care for any of the Heidelberger beers I've tried and I think it's odd that Heidelberger is so prominent in Heidelberg when there's so many good German beers available. Maybe it's like how Bud is so prominent in the States?

After our drinks, we made it down to Vetter, one of Jason's favorite spots. We got lucky and was able to score a table outside. It was a busy street and we noticed a huge crowd standing on the Old Bridge, but we decided to just sit and eat than to see what all the commotion was about. We found out later that they had a fireworks show at the castle. Apparently it only happens three times a year. It's a bummer we missed it. I like fireworks.

Vetter had a special spargel (white asparagus) menu. It was in season and found out later a lot of other restaurants had special spargel menus as well. Jason insisted we get something from the spargel menu and assured me that it was going to be amazing. We ordered the veal schnitzel with spargel and it was my favorite of the two dishes we ordered. The schnitzel was lightly breaded and tender. The spargel was prepared traditionally, with hollandaise sauce, and it was delicious.

The other dish was one of Jason's favorites, the half pig knuckle. The side escapes me at the moment. I don't think it was the side of potatoes that was on the table. I have a feeling it was something else. Maybe sauerkraut. The pig knuckle was nothing like I expected. I was envisioning knuckles cooked in some kind of stew or broth. My mom's made pig's feet soup plenty of times and I couldn't picture it being cooked any other way. Well, turns out the pig knuckle ain't from the feet. It can't be. The half knuckle was half the size of my head! It tasted kind of like salty ham. It was a little tough and chewy and gave my mouth a workout. I wasn't too crazy about it and Jason said the last time he had it it was much better and the meat was tender. If I'm ever back, I'm willing to give this dish another try.

During the week, we've been back for drinks with colleagues. They have a good selection of beers and they're brewed in-house. Not only does this place have good food, but it's a great casual place for a group to get together for good beer. Even though they close too damn early (12AM), they get two thumbs up!

Arriving in Heidelberg

After we unloaded our luggage at the hotel, Jason, Casey and I walked along the river to the Old Bridge. A few pictures were taken along the way, but our main goal was to reach the Old City for some good, heavy German grub.

Jason and Casey led me down the Hauptstrasse where we passed a bunch of restaurants. Most of them looked good to me, but someone needed to come to a decision and decide where to go. I finally took charge and pointed at a place and said "What about here?".

We walked into Zum Franziskaner and plopped our tired selves down at a table by the window. Jason and Casey both ordered a Franziskaner dunkel weiss and I opted for the Franziskaner heffeweissen. They were both really good beers but I preferred the dunkel weiss much more.
Jason, being the best boyfriend there is, gave me his beer and "suffered" through the meal drinking the heffeweissen. It was really awesome beer and I was looking forward to trying every German beer imaginable during my week long stay.

The menus were in German with English translations but there were a few translations that didn't make sense. I was trying to decide between two dishes. One was a pork dish in gravy that came with a side of spaetzle (Casey wound up ordering this.) and the other was something where the translation made no sense but came with a side of spaetzle. Jason told me that it was sausage, and I went ahead and ordered it. Turns out it was beef. I was a bit disappointed when I got my entree. I really was hoping for something that came from a pig.


The beef was good and the spaetzle was amazing. I can probably count the number of times I've had spaetzle in the States on one hand, but man, I'll make a bet that that's probably one of the best spaetzles I'll ever have in my life time. It was damn good. When it came out, I was a bit surprised to see it was yellow. All other spaetzle I've had has been white. Parts of it were chewy and parts of it were crispy. I think I was in spaetzle heaven.


Jason ordered some kind of combination pork platter. It came with a couple of sausages, some other pork products, a dumpling, mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. He suggested we share plates. I think he caught me eyeing his sausages. A bite into each one and I was transplanted from spaetzle heaven into sausage heaven. The mashed and kraut were both good, but the dumpling I could've done without. I'm not a fan of German dumplings in general.

I didn't snap a pic of Casey's dish, but it looked good and he said it was one of the better meals he's had in Heidelberg. This was his third trip to Heidelberg and I asked him what his favorite place was. His response went something like: "It doesn't get much better than this." I realized by the end of the week how accurate that statement was. Zum Franziskaner ranks up there with one of the best meals I had during my trip. It had the best spaetzle and one of the best beers. It's definitely a place I'd like to go back to if I'm ever in Heidelberg again.

A Week In Heidelberg

It's been a while since I've made updates. No worries, I haven't stopped eating. I've been away and just got back from my first trip to Germany this weekend. (Actually my first time in Europe!)

I had lots of beer, pork and potatoes and it was all good. Unfortunately, my pants were a little more fitted than usual towards the end of the trip, but hey.. when in Rome.. or in this case, when in Heidelberg.

The next several days, I'll be writing about my trip and posting pics of the food I had there. I don't normally take pics of my meals because I don't normally carry a camera around and even if I did, I think it's a little odd busting one out in a restaurant. But something about being a camera-toting tourist makes it seem okay.

Heck, I haven't even seen the pics yet. No fear, when I dig through my pics and find them, they'll be up here. But until then, guten appetit!