Restaurants in Germany – Hotel Prinzregent, Munich-Riem

June 25, 2008

Bavaria is just such a beautiful place. I just cannot get enough of it. Especially at this time of the year travelling around Upper Bavaria is truly enjoyable. Even sub-urban places such as Riem have their charm. I stayed in a small hotel at the outskirts of Munich to attend a conference at the Messe Zentrum (the fair).

The very first evening, I asked the receptionist where one could have a decent bite of food, preferable Bavarian style and I was pointed into the direction of the Hotel Prinzregent (www.prinzregent.de), in fact a country inn style place along the main street in Riem. The ‘guest room’ of the public bar part was fairly busy at a Friday evening.

The Bavarian country inn – Hotel Prinzregent

As it was my first evening back in Germany I could not resist ordering a pork roast Bavarian style with ‘Semmelknoedeln’, a kind of cooked carbohydrates made from leftover bread crumbs. It was so delicious I completely forgot to take pictures for my blog. I drank wheat beer with the meal though the Prinzregent has a nice wine list available. For dessert, which I usually do not have, I had ‘Apfelkuechle’, a kind of apple backed in a doe and seasoned with raisin. After that mighty meal I was exhausted and went to bed early.

The pasta

The very next day I came back to enjoy some more of the delicious food at the Prinzregent. Unfortunately, I did not order the roasted pork again (I should have) but went for a vegetarian pasta dish. It was ok but could not match the pork. The side salad was fresh and tasty.

The salad

This time I tried some of the white wines with my food. First I ordered a Riesling from, of course, the Mosel. A ‘2006 Weingut Schmitges dry Riesling from grey slates’ was my choice. It is a young but very enjoyable wine, typical for the region, elegant, displaying aromas of citrus and green apples, a fruity, minerally kind of wine.

For my second glass I choose a Sylvaner from the native lands of my mother, Franconia (the most northerly part of Bavaria). Horst Sauer is one of the icons of the vintners and winemakers from Franconia. His ‘2006 Eschendorfer Lump’ is just divine. The Germans like to describe a wine as “filigran”, which my dictionary says means “lacy” or “filigree”. I do not know if that makes sense to you. Anyway, the wine shows the typical Franconian character, is complex and fine, well balanced, has a good structure and a lingering finish. The prices for the wines were not on the cheap. The fellow at the next table turfed the idea of having a glass of wine after he saw the prices. Well, I was in a festive mood that day and did not bother.

White sausages Bavarian style, isn’t this beautiful?

My last meal at this wonderful place I enjoyed sitting in the large beer garden under very old chestnut trees reminiscing about the wonderful time I had in Bavaria. It was rather a late breakfast than lunch and therefore I ordered the typical Bavarian “white sausages” which is eaten with sweat mustard. A wheat beer matches that perfectly. Sorry you wine folks.

Address:
Hotel Prinzregent an der Messe
Riemer Strasse 350
81829 Munich
Te.: +49-89-94539-0
http://www.prinzregent.de

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Eating out in Yea, Victoria

June 24, 2008

When we are on our vineyard in Glenburn, Victoria, we love to visit wineries and vineyards in the vicinity but we also love to tour the small country towns, villages and hamlets in rural Victoria. One of our favourite destinations, and just about 32 km northwards of Two Hills Vineyard is the small town of Yea.

Yea is about 100 km north of Melbourne and has a population of about 1000 souls. In 1837 the first settlers arrived in the district – the Shire of Murrindindi – from New South Wales (under the leadership of the explorers William Hovell and Hamilton Hume) and ever since the area along the Goulburn River was settled as farmland. It was originally known as Muddy Creek settlement and later named after Colonel Lacy Yea, who was killed in the Crimean War. Before white settlement, the Woiwurung people of the Kulin nation occupied the area. Unfortunately, they had to bear the brunt of the effects of British settlement policy and were frequently and forcibly resettled and never obtained titles of their native lands.

Today Yea is a pleasant country town and centre for agriculture, forestry and tourism. Needless to say, quite a few wineries are located in the area, most of them members of the Upper Goulburn Winegrowers Association.

There are quite a few eating places to choose from. Depending on your time and your budget, the whole range of country food is available at your finger tips. We usually frequent three places which I would like to introduce to you today briefly.

1. Marmalades

Marmalades is a cafe, tea house, local produce and wine store cum gallery and offers all kinds of local and international food. It has a very pleasant atmosphere. There is a library and a reading groom.

marmalades.jpg

You can park right in front of the place.

The counter

Below you can see some of our most preferred dishes.

Margit, Charlotte and Lucy around the table

2. Elmers

A little bit further down the main road, near the Foodworks supermarket, you will find Elmers, another cafe cum restaurant. At times you need to book because it is so crowded. As the occasional tourist just try you luck.

Behind the counter at Elmers, people are very busy.

3. The Country Club Hotel

Located about between the two, is the Country Club Hotel. It has, as most Australian pubs or hotels, a public bar and a restaurant. There is usually some kind of life music in the restaurant on the weekends. This is a good place for the evenings to go out and/or meet with friends and family.

I somehow do not have pictures of the inside of the Hotel and of the food served. However, let me assure you that I ate there the best Kangaroo steak I had ever consumed in Australia.

Mind you my first Kangaroo meat I tasted during my university years in Bonn. The ‘mensa’, as it is called in German, the university eating place, a ‘cantina’ so to say, had offered it as a novum to its hungry young men and women some 30 years ago.

Also the other dishes on the menu are worth trying. The Country Club Hotel also offers local wines with their meals. So if you are in the vicinity and you want to try solid, modern and traditional country style food please drop in and give a couple of hours of your time to Yea and its eateries. You will be pleasantly surprised. You will also have the opportunity to sample some of the finest locally produced wines from the Upper Goulburn Wine Region since all three restaurants have a variety of locally produced wines on offer.

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Restaurants in Jakarta: Champa – Wine and Spirits Circle Dinner

June 11, 2008

Saturday night marked a rare occasion, because the Jakarta Wine and Spirits Circle had not organised a function for a while. Therefore, the invitation for a dinner cum wine tasting came just at the right time. We are members of the Circle since many years and cultivate some very fond memories of past wine tastings.

The event took place at the Champa restaurant, which provides Vietnamese and Indochinese food. The Champa opened its doors to the public in 2002 and possesses a warm and cosy atmosphere. I had already been to this restaurant with friends and business associates a couple of times and always liked the food.

The tables were a bit crowded by the glasses

The menue showed exciting features

‘Four temptations’, the entree ‘Goi Cuon Ca hoi, Goi Cuon Malay, kai Hoer Bai teay, Tom Ham Pho Mat’, freele translated, it reads as follows:

– Champa fresh spring rolls made of salmon
– Crispy minced chicken and crab meat martabak style
– Thai famous deep fried herb chicken in Pandean leaves
– Roasted Tiger Prawn and herb crust with cheese on salad

The main dish named ‘Bo Nuong Hed Hom ca Hoi Mojo’ consisted of grilled tender loin with mushroom cheese and stir fried Norwegian salmon with Mojo.

The dessert, called ‘Da Vanni’, was a crepes filed with Banana and cream, vanilla ice cream, sprinkled with nuts and chocolate.

How about the wine you might ask. Well, Alsatian and Austrian wines were on the agenda. we started with an aperitif, a ‘2004 Domaines Schlumberger Sylvaner’. Woh, an Alsation Sylvaner, Sylvaner being the grape of Franconia and its famous Bocksbeutel wines. It felt fresh and fizzy, a nice aperitif, I must say.

We faced seven glasses on our table, it felt a bit crowded in the limited space available. Three were for whites and four for red wines.

White wines

– 2004 Domaines Schlumberger Pinot Gris
– 2004 Domaines Schlumberger Gewuerztraminer
– 2005 Leth Gruener Veltliner Kabinett

Red wines

– 2004 Leth St. Laurent Reserve
– 2004 Leth Linot Noir Classic
– 2006 Pfaffl Blauer Zweigelt
– 2003 Sepp Moser Blauburgunder Gebling

Let me say it from the outset: this was not an evening for scribbling down tasting notes. I was in a much too good a mood for that. I also do not know much about Alsatian and Austrian wines. But the evening confirmed one thing: one has to drink and taste a lot in oder to understand the intricacy of the various grape varieties and the wines. I promised myself to drink more wine from the two regions.

Domaines Schlumberger is a wine estate in Alsace. It was established in 1810 (these Europeans have awfully long traditions in wine making) and has 140 ha under vines, half of this area classified as “grand crus”. Schlumberger only vinifies his own grapes. Today, the sixth and the seventh generation of Schlumbergers run the estate. Much of the vineyards is organically farmed (60 ha organic and 30 ha biodynamic).

The Domaines Schlumberger Gewuerztraminer was semi-dry I would say but showed some very fine aromas and great balance. Also the Pinot Gris must have had some high residual sugar because I perceived it as almost sweet. Both wines went well with the Asian food. However, I liked the Sylvaner best. Unfortunately, I did not check the bottles to identify from which “terroir” the Schlumberger wines came from (there are 4 grand crus: Kitterle, Kessler, Saering and Spiegel) and the wine list is silent about their provenience. Maybe we drank only the “normal” wines (Les Princes Abbes) and not the ‘grand crus’.

The Sepp Moser Estate (www.sepp-moser.at) in Rohrendorf in the wine region of the Kremstal produces mainly white wines. The location Gebling has been used for vine cultivation since 1284 and is a steep south facing terraced vineyard. The Pinot Noir displayed the typical characteristics of the variety and the ‘terroir’ (hot days, coll nights during vintage time).

From the Pfaffl Wine Estate, located near Vienna in a region called “Weinviertel”, a Blauer Zweigelt was included in the tasting. Zweigelt is a red grape variety developed in Austria in 1922 and, of course, it bears the name of the developer (Fritz Zweigelt who should later became director of the Institute for Viticulture and Pomology at Klosterburg). Zweigelt is today the most widely grown red grape variety in Austria. Interesting is that the grape is also cultivated in the Niagara wine region of Ontario/Canada. The Pfaffl family cultivates about 30 ha of vineyards and goes back generations.

The Leth Estate is located in the village of Fels at the river of Wagram, Lower Austria and has about 40 ha under vines. The wine-plus website (www.wein-plus.com) awarded the winery three stars. The estate has practiced organic viticulture for decades and produces mainly white wines (70%). We were lucky to taste two reds from Franz Leth’s cellar.

In fact after all the tasting I settled in the end for the ‘2004 Leth St. Laurent Reserve’, which I liked best. It is a full bodied red with a fruity flavour and a mellow finish. The grape variety originates from France and belongs to the same family as Pinot Noir. St. Laurent (also called Pinot St. Laurent) is an aromatic dark red grape with aromas of forest berries and black cherries. Today it is mainly planted in Austria and the Czech Republic (and a small area in Palatinate and Rheinhessen in Germany).

When we left, and we were among the last guests, there was nothing left of this wine and many others. My resolution for the evening was to try more wines from these two wine regions.

Address:
The Champa
Jl. Wuaya 1/50
Kebayoran Baru
Jakarta 12170
Te.:+61-(021)-727-88668

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The mighty wine bloggers

June 10, 2008

Two Hills Vineyard: newly planted Chardonnay

Blogging is all in vogue these days. Millions of people write in their free time entries into their electronic diaries or online journals as they are called.

The founder of “Vinography” a reward winning wine blog, Alder Yarrow is the pioneer of wine blogging. His blog won various awards over the last years. In 2008 it received the American Wine Blog Awards for ‘best overall wine blog’ and ‘best writing’; in 2007 the same award was bestowed on him for ‘best wine reviews’. Vinography won accolades by the Salon des Vins de la Loire Wine Blog (2007) and Food Blogging Awards (2006, 2005, 2004).

Vinography is more than a private blog (www.vinography.com), it is a professional undertaking with various distinguished contributors. But apart from very interesting information about wine, wineries and vineyards, food and everything related to wine, Alder also collects blogs and he assembled a list of wine blogs, which you can find on his website. This list is of course not complete. An undertaking like this is never completed, there are always new people starting their blogs out there, and it is tedious to find them.

The list of about 600 or so odd blogs and wine podcasts is a very interesting piece of information.

There are about 65 winery blogs and 43 wine podcasts, some of them quite entertaining. The remainder are blogs in various languages. English is of course the most common language used by wine bloggers; the next most prominent is Italian followed by French. There are even wine bloggers writing in Japanese, Chinese and Indonesian.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry that some of these bloggers are pretty organised and that they do things together. For instance the German wine blogger organise so called “wine rallys”, where they write about a common theme selected by the members and hosted by one of the bloggers where all pieces produced about this theme are collected, analyzed and propagated.

The Vinography list of wine blogs according to language goes as follows:

404 English
41 Italian
36 French
29 German
22 Spanish
11 Portuguese
5 Chinese
4 Dutch
2 Japanese
2 Hungarian
2 Norwegian
1 Indonesian
1 Slovak

There is a wealth of information to be found about wine, wine regions, wine-making, etc. Some of these blog are humble private tools for enjoyment and distraction, others are professional instruments for marketing, information, analysis, presentation and sale.

Check it out yourself and have fun. It’s worth it.

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Kayzer Soza – bar cum resto in Berlin

June 8, 2008

I love Berlin; it’s a great city with so much on offer. My friend Rainer Heufers took me to a rustic place in Tucholsky street, near the synagogue, called “Kayzer Soza”, named after the mythic film figure. Rainer knows Berlin very well since he lived there for a couple of years.

The inside of “Kayzer Soza”

Berlin is a cosmopolitan city again with a growing Jewish community. Just across the street from the restaurant was a bagel bakery.

“Kayzer Soza” was buzzing with people, mostly young, happy people with lots of time on their hands. Many were seated on the pavement of the sidewalk where we could not find space so we went inside. There it was rather empty at this early time, but that was about to change soon.

We ordered a hearty meal consisting of a strange selection of dishes: Suebian cheese noodles, a Mediterranean salad, olives, and a bottle of ‘Primitivo’, a ‘2006 Terre di Montelusa’ from Italy. We just felt like that after a long day meeting. The wine intrigued me because he comes from Brindisi in Apulia (Puglia) and I never knowingly drank a wine from there. It was a robust country wine. I guess the bottle did not cost more than 3 to 4 EURO. My last ‘Zinfandel’, as the ‘Primitivo’ is known in the US, I tasted more than 10 years ago during a winery tour in California.

When I opened the menu a poem jumped into my eyes. Freely translated it said the following:

“Good wine makes good blood.
Good blood makes good deeds and
good deeds lead mankind to heaven”.

It is said to originate from the Veneto, the lovely Italian wine region.

Suebian cheese noodles

The salad

A simple wine but matching the occasion

My friend Rainer tugging in

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“Just off the boat….”

June 7, 2008

Colleagues from afar (fltr. Rainer, Sagarica, Joerg, Annemie, Philipp)

I attended a work conference in Potsdam near Berlin. The very first day, I went out with some colleagues to have lunch. We found a Bavarian Beer garden restaurant, usually no place to have a decent wine but plenty of good beers in big glasses. Wheat beet or “Weissbier” is one of my favorites.

Bavarian Wheat beer

May is asparagus time in Germany, usually enjoyed with a glass of white wine, maybe a Pinot Gris or Blanc, or a Riesling. Not so in a Bavarian environment, of course, but the beer was delicious too.

Asparagus, ‘old German style’

A typical Bavarian “snack” is “white sausages” served with sweet mustard. Well, Potsdam is far away from Bavaria so the sweet mustard was missing in this case.

Bavarian “Weisswuerste”

White and blue are the colours of Bavaria. Next time you find yourself in a Bavarian environment, try out some of the special local dishes.

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Back home again

June 6, 2008

Having lunch at Lutter und Wegner im Künstlerhaus, Munich

You might have sensed it. I was away for more than two weeks. Work took me to Germany and I had no time for blogging, only work, work, work. But fortunately, there were some occasions to taste good wines and enjoy some marvelous German food. More about this later.

In May the weather in Germany was much better than in March or April during my previous visits. The temperatures were very pleasant. The sky was always blue, everything was green, nature at its best.

The trip took me from Frankfurt to Bonn, Berlin, and Munich. For the first time I went by train from Berlin to Munich and from there back to Frankfurt Airport.

It was a lovely ride, the fields were green, acacia trees, linden trees and chestnuts in full bloom, farmers cutting grass to make hay, young barley, wheat and rye growing nicely, canola (rape seed) already advanced just after blooming, young maize plants just 10 cm high. Only here and there one could spot some cattle in lush paddocks. The German landscape seemed almost void of people although the country is much denser populated than Australia.

The six hours on the train were very enjoyable. I spotted the last vineyards in the Saale valley. When crossing the Hallertau, a couple of hours north of Munich, I saw huge trellis systems for the cultivation of hops for beer production. The next vineyards I should see were near Stuttgart when the train moved on to Mannheim and finally Frankfurt.

No I am back in steamy tropical Jakarta and we are getting ready to move to Thailand at the end of August. By then it’s 10 years that we lived in Indonesia, a decade of my life. Time passes. I am afraid that the next months will not allow me to write much since so many organizational tasks await me here. Bare with me.

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Restaurants in Asia – Bon Ton, Kuala Lumpur

April 29, 2008

One of my most favourite eating places in Kuala Lumpur is the restaurant & wine bar “Bon Ton” (www.bontonkl.com). I went their the other day with some colleagues for a business dinner.

The restaurant is located right in the middle of town. There is a huge parking lot in front of the place because next to it is another popular Malaysian restaurant. The decoration is in fusion style of various origins, mostly Southeastasian with some European influence. The web page of “Bon Ton” includes some nice photos of the interior (better ones than I could make). Have a look.

Since I was the only one drinking wine, I restricted myself to the house wine, an Australian Shiraz (I somehow did not ask where it came from, sorry folks, will do it next time). The wine list is very impressive and contains many prime producers from Australia, Europe and South Africa among others.

Below you can see what we had.

Prawn ravioli in spicy Thai broth with Cilantro

Vegetable platter of pita bread with roasted vegetables and lentil stew

Asian rack of lamb with potatoes, mushrooms and oriental salad

The food is excellent, the atmosphere very relaxing and inviting, the service is great and that together makes it a great place to take you family and friends to when in KL.

See you there, one day.

Address:
Bon Ton
Restaurant, Wine Bar and Catering
No 8, Jalan Conlay
50450 Kuala Lumpur
Tel.: +60-3-21413848
Fax: +60-3-21449289
e-mail: info@bontonkl.com

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Easter Sunday Lunch

March 23, 2008

Easter calls for some special celebrations. Because we were at home, the four of us for the first time since a long time, we needed something yummy.

We had a red snapper left in the fridge and decided to prepare it in the style of Guadeloupe and Martinique. The recipe we got from Mark Bittman, “Fish – The complete guide to buying and cooking”, Hungry Minds Co, New York 1994, and it goes as follows:

– 4 firm-fleshed steaks from a large red snapper, scaled, gutted (head on or off as you like it best)
– 2 cups of water
– 1/2 cup fresh lime juice
– salt
– 1/4 cup olive oil
– 1 cup chopped shallots, scallions (both green and white parts)
– 1 tablespoon minced garlic
– 1 hot pepper, deveined, seeds and chopped
– 1 1/2 cups chopped fresh tomatoes,
– 1 bay leave
– 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
– 1/2 table spoon minced fresh thyme
– freshly ground black pepper
– lime wedges

You marinate the fish in the water, lime juice and 1 table spoon of salt (make sure the fish is completely covered) for about 30 minutes (drain, refrigerate if the weather is too warm, as it is here in tropical Jakarta).

Heat the oil and cook the shallots, about two thirds of the garlic and the chopped red pepper until soft, then add the tomatoes and herbs, season with salt and pepper and cook for about 5 minutes. Drain the fish and add the above together with some of the marinade, add some more garlic and simmer over low heat for about 10 minutes. Spoon the marinade over the fish and serve with rice and the lemon wedges.

Voilá, that’s what it may look like.

fisheaster.jpg

Court Boullion, red snapper

Needless to say, the red snapper was delicious. We had rice and some steamed vegetables with it. Since we ran out of white wine (how terrible in a vintner’s family), we opened instead a bottle of Pinot Noir. It came from South Baden (Kaiserstuhl), a ‘2005 Ihringer Winklerberg Spätburgunder’, dry wine, 13.5 % alcohol, produced by the Ihringer Winegrowers Co-operative (www.winzergenossenschaft-ihringen.de).

It was a typical Pinot Noir as far as the colour was concerned. It was fresh, fruity and showed well balanced tannins and acids. The aromas were dominated by forest berries. But despite this it complemented the hot chili taste of the red snapper very well.

The bottle was given to me by Birgit Lamm, the director of our International Academy for Leadership in Gummersbach, Germany after I facilitated a training recently. It did not last long. But wine in the tropics needs to be consumed rather earlier than later. Thanks again for this nice gift. I’ll come back for more soon.

jhringer.jpg

2005 Ihringer Winklerberg Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir)

After the meal we had espresso and cognac together with some thin chocolates. I smoked a Juan Clemente cigar (made in Santiago, Dominican Republic) which was excellent. I had acquired them during my recent trip to my hometown Trier, Germany, from Wolsdorff Tobacco where I usually stock up on cigars.

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Country Inns in Germany: Asparagus and river perch

May 18, 2007

While travelling in Germany recently, I had a lot of fish and seafood dishes, the reason for this being that I accompanied a group of visiting Indonesians to a number of coastal towns on the East and the North Sea. Since Germany had a splendid spring, this was the more enjoyable.

Later, together with my brother and my old folks in Trier, I visited one of the traditional German country inns so prevalent in my home area, the Mosel River Valley, the Landgasthof Kopp (www.landgasthofkopp.com) in Hentern, a small village between the Mosel tributaries Ruwer and Saar.

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Landgasthof Kopp main entrance

Springtime in Germany is ‘asparagus time’. Everywhere the lush white sticks can be purchased or consumed. All four of us ordered some kind of an asparagus dish. I had asparagus with perch (German: Zander).

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River perch with asparagus

With this delicious meal, I drank the house wine, Ockfener Scharzberg Riesling, a local product from a small village on the Saar river called Ockfen (www.ockfen-home.de). Ockfen has about 700 inhabitants and of the agricultural used land of 246 ha about 90 ha are under vines on very steep slopes. The most famous terroir is ‘Ockfener Bockstein’ which is among the best wines from the Saar. The wines from this location are very dry, minerally and fruity with a good structure.

From the Middle Ages onwards it was the monasteries along the Saar river that cultivated vines and promoted the wine industry. The wealth and prosperity of Ockfen was almost exclusively based on its wine industry. The many small villages and towns along the Saar river are worth visiting (among them Saarburg, Ayl, Kanzem, Oberemmel, Serrig, Wiltingen to name only a few. I highly recommend this very beautiful part of Germany.

As regards the inn, the Landgasthof Kopp, this place is a must, not only because of the superb quality of the food and the service. The price too was a pleasant surprise, unbeatable, I must say. For the four of us, including drinks, we spent a total of only 60 Euro for a memorable family lunch.

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