Germany

Once the working week was over, there were only about 20 hours left to eat to my hearts content. The last dinner was at an Uyghur restaurant recently featured in Lucky Peach magazine. The Kashgar Uyghur Restaurant is located very close to the main train station (München Hauptbahnhof) and on first glance is a fancy kebab joint. We went upstairs where it’s a plain restaurant and you’re handed takeaway menus from which to order. We left it all to a colleague who was the most knowledgeable on Uyghur cuisine (from Xinjiang province in China) and he went ahead and overordered for us all.

I don’t have the ‘official’ menu names for anything – everything was listed in Chinese or German, of course. We started with samsa – baked handheld pockets of flaky dough filled with a lightly spiced minced lamb mixture. These were brilliant and I probably could have made a meal of two or three of them.

A dish of cold spicy noodles (laghman) were topped with a hot stirfry of lamb and vegetables.

Beef stomach was soft and tender, not unlike slurping down beefy jelly.

Then came a stir fry….of lots of different things. And so we renamed it the stir fry of everything. Those flattish clear bean noodles were spectacular.

Dapanji – Big Plate Chicken – was probably my favourite dish of the evening. Large flat belt noodles were served with the fabulously delicious bone-in chicken, pepper and potato stew. Here was just a portion for one – my friend would have ordered the larger version had I not stopped him!

Another dish! Stir fried egg and cucumber and meat. The mild cucumber was a soothing balm to our now tingling tongues.

And still there was more – ok, our final dish of stir fried laghman. Excellent as it was, we could only pick at it. Excellent noodles, yes, excellent.

Overall, excellent! Highly recommended! There is another Uyghur restaurant nearby (that more resembles a Chinese restaurant) but according to my colleague who tried both, this was the better one.

Kashgar Uyghur Restaurant
Dachauer Str. 4
80335 Munich, Germany

And then on my last morning, before my flight back in the afternoon, I had to fit as many Munich foods as I could into my gob. I didn’t do too badly.

My main stop that morning was the Viktualienmarkt – Munich’s famous outdoor food market. Sure there are tourists around but you’ll also find locals shopping for the week or picking up something a bit special. I joined the locals in the queue at one of the mushroom stalls and bought a mixture of wild mushrooms to cook at home that night.

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I also stopped at the Münchner Suppenküche, one of my favourite stops from over a decade ago, and I was happy to see that it’s still going strong. This large bowl of chicken noodle soup was €3,50 and it remains one of the best chicken noodle soups I’ve ever had.

Münchner Suppenküche
Am Viktualienmarkt Abt. 3 Stand 5/28/29
80331 München, Germany

Leberkäse! This is one of my most favourite Bavarian foods. Yes, I should have also eaten weisswurst but leberkase! If you’re not familiar with it, I guess I could liken it to posh Spam/bologna. You can get it everywhere. At snack stands, a hot slice will be sandwiched in a roll. In restaurants, a slice is likely to be served with potatoes and a fried egg. As I was noshing on the hoof, it would have to be in a roll for me. I took a tip from somewhere on the Internet and got my leberkäse in a roll directly from one of the Viktualienmmarkt’s butchers – they’ll slice the hot meatloaf and weigh your slice (nice and thick!) before shoving it into a sliced roll and handing it over. Look at that massive wodge! With a little mustard, it was some fine eating on the hoof while doing some sightseeing in the centre.

I had to end my haphazard ‘meal’ with something sweet. I concluded my tour of Munich with a stop at Cafe Luitpold, close to Odeonsplatz. I only found out later that the breakfasts/brunch here are quite famous but I only had the time and the stomach space for Kaffee und Kuchen.

Choosing a cake from the massive display was certainly challenging! But in the end, it was another slice of Prinzregententorte. It was perhaps a more elegant looking slice but taste wise – well, both were excellent!

Cafe Luitpold
Brienner Str. 11
80333 München, Germany

And then it was off to the airport! Goodbye, Munich!

I love the city! Other points to note include the fact that it’s safe. No one bothers you at night when you’re walking around and everything’s wonderfully clean. The food is good everywhere and there are plenty of options other than Bavarian food nowadays. I do hope to return soon (especially when my kilo of Ritter Sport runs out)!

Here’s a general tip – there’s a very well-stocked supermarket at Munich Airport. I bought tonnes of things to shove last minute into my suitcase.

All my photos from my trip can be found in this Flickr album.

So I was travelling again as you could probably gather if you follow my Instagram and Twitter feeds. This time work took me back to the Bavarian city of Munich for a week. I love this city – my first and only visit was about 10 years ago when my brother and I spent a wintery week there indulging in everything Bavarian and Christmas. This time there were no Christmas Market stands and the weather for the most part was quite pleasant; oh yeah, and there was mostly work too, forgot about that. And I now have a little bit more spending money than an impoverished student (I still shop like a student though – I brought home 1.2kg of Ritter Sport).

Surprisingly (or perhaps not, I don’t know), not much has changed about the city in over a decade. Sure there are a few more international high street shops but there are still lots of independent shops and little cafes. I think even the food scene has improved somewhat.

Our first evening’s dinner was at Kuchlverzeichnis, a very traditional Bavarian restaurant with, yes, lots of pork on offer. We all shared a few starters first. There was a traditional platter of Bavarian snacks (I really enjoyed the obatzda), …

…a venison pate served with a berry and horseradish compote,…

…and shredded duck in aspic. All excellent and all plates cleaned.

For my main course, as soon as I saw schnitzel on the menu, I couldn’t look away. But instead of the traditional Viennese style veal schnitzel, I went with a Münchner Schnitzel, a thin pork cutlet first coated in mustard before being crumbed and fried.

We had to try a traditional Bavarian Cream, here served with fruits. It’s simply a pastry cream thickened with gelatin, nothing much to shout about.

Kuchlverzeichnis
Rosenheimer Str. 10
81669 München, Germany

On some afternoons, I hopped over to True & 12 which seems to be considered one of the best ice cream places in the city. The flavours were indeed pretty fabulous! Here’s a chai latte and mango+ginger…

…and ‘Happy Monkey’ – a banana ice cream with chocolate chips, caramel and cinnamon sugar.

I really liked that scoops were sold individually, so you could have just 1 or 100.

True & 12
Rosenheimer Str. 14
81669 München, Germany

One particularly memorable teatime was spent at Konditorei Wölfl where we had a difficult time choosing just one cake from the myriad of homemade choices. I settled for a Prinzregententorte, a Bavarian cake made with thin layers of sponge cake interleaved with chocolate buttercream and covered with a dark chocolate glaze. It was as amazing as it looked and sounds and their other cakes also got the thumbs up from my colleagues. I hear they get queues down the road on weekends and I would recommend trying to get there on a weekday if possible.

Konditorei Wölfl
Kellerstraße 17
81667 München, Germany

A few days in and the pork levels in our bodies were already starting to get a bit high. We took a break one evening with Afghani food at a place nearby – Chopan (to go). Massive plates of basmati rice pilau and tender lamb and heavily spiced spinach ensured that we left satiated, our tastebuds enlivened again.

Chopan (to go)
Rosenheimerstraße 6 + 8
81669 München, Germany

Sometime later during the week, a few of us were getting a little tired of the sandwich lunches and we left in search of a kebab. Oh yes, this was my first German döner kebab and now I understand what the fuss is about. I mean, look at all that salad! It’s, like, fresh and whatnot all on top of some quality meat (by quality, I mean I can identify it as meat, unlike those elephant leg doners).

It was back to Bavarian food for a couple more nights and our meal at Haxnbauer was memorable mainly for the ridiculous amounts of meat before us. Between five of us, we first shared a platter for two. Goodness, if this was for two, then surely this was for two as a main course.

While I was freaking out about the size of the knuckles and thinking of ordering slices, the others were keen to order by whole knuckle (warning: this is not a budget move by any means). When you state that preference, your waiter will come along with a platter of knuckles, with prices stuck on toothpicks, from which to choose. One veal knuckle and one pork knuckle then. These were whisked back into the kitchen for slicing before being presented to us yet again. Both were excellent but my favourite was the pork with its crackling, of course.