RESTAURANT OF THE WEEK
A PERSONAL REVIEW OF RESTAURANTS AROUND THE WORLD

RATSKELLER MUNCHEN
MUNICH, GERMANY

This is one of our favorite restaurants in Munich.  It's right in the heart of all the action in the city and just steps away from the famous Glockenspiel.

The Restaurant Is Just Down The Way On The Left
 

The minute you walk in the place there's no doubt that you're in Bavaria.  Plenty of wood everywhere including the floor.  And adorable wooden chairs that you'd fully expect to find in a place like this.

The food is down home Bavarian fare. Lots of wursts, schnitzels, pork, pretzels and of course--beer!

This was the very first restaurant we sampled during our first trip to Deutschland so we were anxious to bite into some true Bavarian cuisine.

My wife started with some air cured beef on toast and I began my lunch with some sort of cabbage soup. Very good! We munched through some of those famous German pretzels, too.  From there we moved onto the main course.

I ordered a Bavarian wurst platter while my wife made what I considered to be an odd selection.  She ordered meatloaf.  Meatloaf in Germany?  Oh well!

My wurst platter was exactly what I expected.  Don't hold me to the precise types of wursts (sausages) that arrived but it appeared as if there were knockwursts, bratwursts and one other kind that I couldn't put my finger on.  Everything was great and while I know the whole deal was a cardiac arrest on a plate, this kind of food just doesn't seem as greasy in Germany than it does here.  Cut open a brat in the U.S. and it oozes grease.  Not so in Germany.

My wife's meatloaf was a big surprise.  Here we think of meatloaf as a concoction of ground meat, bread crumbs, and seasoning with a tomato sauce on top.  Her German meatloaf was like nothing we've ever seen before and it was delicious.  It's tough to describe but basically it looked like the world's thickest slice of bologna.  It was probably an inch and a quarter thick and looked and tasted like bologna with no sauce on top.  Very good and certainly different.

We each ended our meal with a steaming cup of hot coffee on this visit in preparation to head back out into the cold (this was a winter visit) to watch the action at the Glockenspiel tower.  By the way, be careful while watching the Glockenspiel show.  While Munich is a very safe city you might find somebody trying to pick your purse or wallet while filming the show or staring up at the tower.

One side note.  I'm not sure whether they were on the menu at this restaurant or not because we got there around 1pm but if you'd like to try a uniquely Munich tradition, have weisswurst for breakfast.  Back in the 1800s a sausage maker screwed up the recipe for one of his wursts.  However this became a good thing because people figured out that weisswursts helped to ease hangovers.  So it became a tradition.  You'll see folks eating these little white wursts for breakfast along with a glass of weissbier (white or wheat beer).  Weisswursts aren't usually sold much later than 10am and not after noon.

Ratskeller Muncheon is located at Marienplatz 8 in the heart of the city.  Reservations are required most of the time although on our first visit in November, we just breezed in right off the street and were immediately seated.

OTHER MUNICH RESTAURANT REVIEWS:

Hofbrauhaus
Spatenhaus