Wednesday, June 16, 2010

German/Austrian food

So, we've been in the Austria-Bavaria region of the world, and though we travel on a pretty tight budget, we do make time to sample the local cuisine. I know I talked about the Czech food we had in Prague, but I thought I would take a moment to talk about the wonderful (and sometimes not so wonderful) foods we've eaten in Salzburg and Munich.
In Salzburg we had a few good dishes, most of them at the wonderful Augustinian Brewery Beergarten, where the beer is brewed, as you can tell by the title, by the Augustinian monks in the monastery above the garten. We went there our first night, following our roomies who had been there dozens of times over the course of their study in Salzburg, and tried a dish on the recommendation of one of the guys. It turned out to be a slab of pork that was cooked nicely, but was fattier than I would usually eat. Being hungry though, I ate it regardless and was pleasantly surprised by the flavor, a rich pork roast. The potatoes were a little different, not quite sauerkraut potatoes but they were mixed with what I presume is some kind of mustard. They took a little getting used to, but I ate mine and Air's because I liked them so much. The second time we went to the Augustinian we had several things from the food court. Air got a currywurst, literally a wurst topped with ketchup and curry, as well as something like a meatloaf meatball (we didn't really like that one). I got a kaserkreiner or something like that, it was a regular braut type sausage smothered in two different types of mustard. Mmm. We also got bretzels and different deserts to try.
Being a beergarten, they obviously serve beer. The way you do it is to find a seat out in the shady garden filled with trees and tables (hard to do in the evening when everyone and their kid is out to enjoy the food and friendships), then you have one person stake the table while the other go get the beers. You pay for the beer at the cash register, they hand you a ticket and you grab a freshly washed stein (1 liter or .5 liter sizes) and go wash it in cold water for a minute or two. This chills the stien so that the beer stays colder longer, and gives it a better flavor. Next, you take the cold stein and ticket to the pourer behind the counter, and he pours you your beer, takes you ticket and sends you off.
Fast and efficient: the German way. Interesting tip: There is a line on all the mugs and cups here in Europe, and if your beer isn't poured to the line, or comes out with too much head and not the right amount of beer, you can point it out and get the correct amount. I don't recommend doing it if you don't speak the language, but it's a good tip in case they decide that just because you're a tourist you don't deserve the same treatment as a native.
Here in Munich we ate our first meal at the festival celebrating Munich's founding some 800 years ago, so we ate stall foods of traditional nommage. We had bretzels with mustard, Air got a real brautwurst and I got some kielbasa-type wurst. I didn't like the flavor of hers, but mine was fabulous, especially because the bun for it was a hard, crusty fresh baked thing, full of flavor.
Air tried this thing called a "raddler" which is some kind of fruit drink and light beer mixed. It sounded bad, but it was almost like sprite-flavor, and we saw that they had different fruit flavors, raspberry, strawberry, lemon etc.

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