Next Stop on the Eurotrip...

Essen in München

There is really no words to describe how excited I was to visit Munich. It was the second stop on our trip to Europe last summer, and I knew it was going to be incredible. My family originally came over from Germany in the late 1800's, but unfortunately a lot of the German traditions were lost in my family over the years. I really wanted to experience the place where my roots began, and I felt at home from the second that we stepped off the plane. I was incredibly excited about the beer and sausages of course, but I was really blown away by all of the cuisine that we experienced. We jumped right into the cuisine once we settled into the hotel. We went to a central market in Munich called the Viktualienmarkt, where there are a ton of food and beer vendors. We grabbed some beers, sausages, and pretzels and sat down at the communal picnic tables to enjoy. My particular fare was a currywurst sausage that was topped with curry ketchup and it was a great start to Muenchen cuisine. Curry isn’t something that I particularly think of when I think of German food, but its very popular in the sausage and it’s a really delicious addition. We didn’t go too heavy for lunch because we were planning on goiong to one of the original 6 brewhouses in Germany for dinner, so we spent the rest of the day sightseeing and hanging out.

 

That night we decided to go to the place that every visitor to Munich must go, the Hofbrau Haus. Its an incredible experience for anyone and its definitely deeply enriched in German history. It’s the oldest beer hall in Munich. It used to be a castle that was turned into a brewery and restaurant that seats over 3,000 people. I love Hofbrau beer so I started with something light and we ordered some pretzels to snack on while we waited for our main courses. My fiancé had always told me that no pretzel she had ever had in the US ever matched up to the pretzels in Germany, and while I tend to believe her when she talks about food, I was a little skeptical of just how good she had described them to be. However, once I had my first bite, I knew exactly what she was talking about. Perfectly browned and crunchy on the outside, with a pillowy, doughy middle and the perfect amount of salt dispersed on top, there was nothing like it. Adding just a touch of beer mustard or horseradish mustard was the bit that brought it to another level. 

Unfortunately while we were in Europe, it was incredibly warm and they do not have any air conditioning, so it was a sauna in the restaurant. We sweat all the way through our meal, but it was an awesome experience and a great time. My fiance's brother in law told me I should get the traditional thing that visitors to Munich get, the pork knuckle with a side of knodel. My meal choice didn’t help my internal body temperature because it was comfort food at its finest, but boy was it tasty. The pork skin on the exterior was crispy as it gets. Each and every piece was moist and juicy because the crispy skin had kept all of the moisture in the meat. It was a huge manly piece of meat with a large bone sticking out, a plate that every many would be proud of. I did my best to finish it off, but the knodle really did me in in the end. It’s a delicious side dish, but its so much starch it just fills you up in the end. It’s a large potato dumpling, but it’s the perfect accompaniment for the delicious pork knuckle. I washed it all down with one my favorite German beers, the Hofbrau Dunkel. Each of the major Germany brewhouses in Munich does at a minimum three types of beer, a helles, a traditional german lager, a pilsner and a dark beer called a dunkel. It really is heaven on earth in Munich!

Obviously we ate a lot of this type of fare while we were in Germany, but I was fascinated by the cuisine all over. For breakfast, they offer a ton of different options. My fiance's brother in law bought some Mettwurst, a raw smoked form of sausage that is used to spread over bread at breakfast time. They also serve nurmberger sausages which are smaller link sausages spiced with caraway, tons of bolognas and lunch meats, cheeses, incredible breads and pastries, muesli and granolas and last but not least…tons of NUTELLA! Every morning I had to stop myself from over eating because there was just so much deliciousness available.

One evening we went to a central park in Munich where people hang out and drink and eat together where there is a large Chinese tower. I thought it was a bit strange when we first arrived, but it was a really fun place to hang out. We sat outside and drank for a while listening to the German music. We sat there for a while, so we were starving after two huge liters of beer, so we went up to grab some food again. Pretzels and sausages were the main choices available, but my fiancé ordered me something she thought I would like that was just a bit different. It was a pork meatloaf called leberkaese. It was nothing like a meatloaf you would get here, but it was very delicious in its own right. It had an amazing texture to it, and the pork flavor really shone through. It was much lighter than a traditional meatloaf, but it definitely still had that same comfort food feeling to it.

To be continued...