Frau A and I recently met up with a friend of mine from high school. Her sister lives in Germany, and she & her husband were visiting the sister's family and traveling around southern Germany, Switzerland, and France. We had dinner at one of the nicer Bavarian restaurants in Munich, Wirtshaus in der Au. Thanks for stopping by, Heidi and Chris! (Great German names, BTW)
Our dinner together was a reminder that the first German corporate cafeteria post deserves a follow-up. Here are some more offerings from the office food service.
One common item in colder weather is the "eintopf mit wurst". This is a bowl of lentil soup with two frankfurters thrown in. A German food site has over 50 recipes for this! It can look a little mushy, and tends to be a bit bland, but with a little salt, pepper, and maybe paprika added it's pretty good. Perfect for you low-carb dieters too. You just get a strange feeling cutting up a hot dog with knife and fork... in soup.
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Unfortunately, the "wurst" in the soups is not the highest quality in a corporate cafeteria. And it is not bratwurst, but just a standard hot dog style weiner. No grill here either. Boiled. See them floating on the left here:
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The above photo is also a warning about a typical mistake in Germany. If you order "Pizza Pepperoni" over here you will not get the pizza you expect. Pepperoni means the vegetable, not the meat. You will get what you see above, a cheese pizza with a long green pepper on it (or a bunch of smaller ones). You need to order "Pizza Salami" instead (although they do put salami on it, not the pepperoni style used in the U.S.).
Then there is leberkäse, or shortened to leberkäs. It's the German meatloaf, made with pork instead of beef, so it looks and tastes completely different. It is typically Bavarian comfort food, found at every train station (a slice of it is eaten in a roll with mustard), and often even served for breakfast! In my experience, quality varies greatly (like meatloaf, I guess) but I think there is a reason that the Germans eat it with a lot of mustard, if you know what I mean...
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Need something with your leberkäs? Looking for big and starchy? Go right for the knödel. It's a mammoth dumpling -- usually potato but can also be bread-based. You will need some kind of sauce to add moisture and get it down, that's why it often accompanies roasted pork dishes that come with sauce, like schweinebraten.
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Finally, I need to end with something positive: another photo of bienenstich. Love it. In the first post it was a stock photo from Wikipedia. This time, they were serving it in the cafeteria and I grabbed one. Didn't last long...
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