CULINARY
Regional specialities
There are a variety of regional specialties:
Hamburg and Northern Germany: Hamburg eel soup, Labskaus (corned beef or cured beef with mashed potatoes, rollmops herring and fried egg), pears, beans and bacon, roast Heidschnucken, cabbage and pee (kale and sausages), cod with green sauce, farmer’s breakfast (omelette with Roast potatoes and onions), Hanoverian blind chicken (stew made from bacon, potatoes, vegetables and fruit), pork ham, herring herring, smoked eel, fish and crab rolls as a snack, red groats (fruit puree with vanilla sauce or cream), rum stew (fruit pickled in rum ), Lübecker marzipan.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: Plum’n un Klüt (plums and dumplings), Spickbost (smoked goose breast), Rügenwalder tea sausage.
Mark Brandenburg Teltow turnips, poppy creeks and Poppystriezel, Morchelgerichte, or crabs, Eberswalder donuts, Schwarzenauer (with prunes and dumplings).
Berlin: pork knuckle with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes or pea, meatballs, Berlin liver (with onion and apple rings), egg pancakes, potato pancakes, Berliner (sugar-coated lard biscuits with jam filling) and Berliner Weisse with shot (top-fermented beer with woodruff or raspberry syrup)
Westphalia and Northern Rhineland: Rhenish sauerbraten, potato pancakes (potato) with apple sauce, heaven and earth (apples and mashed potatoes) with Plünz (blood sausage) and fried onions, pepper Potthast (spiced beef with bay leaves) and Mosel pike in a creamy cheese sauce and rye bread with Liver sausage and half rooster (cheese rolls). Smoked ham, excellent sausages and pumpernickel (black wholemeal rye bread) come from Westphalia. Apple cabbage (syrup), plum jam, Aachen Printen, honey cake.
Saxony-Anhalt: Clay and straw (sauerkraut with pea puree), Kohlersuppe (bread cubes, kidney tallow, onions and mushrooms), bacon cake (with eggs and caraway seeds), Zerbster Brägenwurst and bitter beer, Baumkuchen.
Thuringia: Thuringian roast sausages, yeast lentils (pancakes with raisins and sweetened with sugar or jam), crumble cake (with apple, plums, poppy seeds, quark or onions). Various “sponge” dishes (mushrooms are called sponges here).
Saxony: Leipziger Allerlei (vegetable mix), Dresdner Stollen, bacon cakes, quark pods.
Frankfurt and Hesse: Ribs with sauerkraut, Frankfurt sausages and ox breast in Frankfurt green sauce (cold herb sauce with mayonnaise), onion cake and Frankfurt wreath (buttercream cake decorated with almond brittle).
Palatinate and Baden: Saumagen, meat platter, liver dumplings, wine sauerkraut, meatballs, ox breast with horseradish sauce, potato soup with plum cake, steamed noodles with wine sauce, red wine cake, onion cake, wine soup, Riesling chicken with wide ribbon noodles, tarte flambée, Baden escalope soup with white veal trout, brook trout Caper sauce), Black Forest ham and Black Forest cake.
Stuttgart and Swabia: Maultaschen, spaetzle, lentils and spaetzle with silk sausages, Bubenspitzle (made from potato dough), onion roast beef, Swabian Schäufele.
Munich and Bavaria / Franconia: Leberkäs’, various dumplings, suckling pig, spit roast, white cabbage with caraway seeds, mirror carp, mushrooms (forest mushrooms) with dumplings, liver dumpling soup, Nuremberg sausages, white sausage with sweet mustard, pretzels, obatzter (spicy Camembert bread spread made from and onions), Bavarian cream (vanilla cream), strudel, Nuremberg gingerbread.
Tip
The service is already included in the hotel bills. A service charge of 10% is expected in restaurants and cafés. Taxi drivers, hairdressers and toilet staff also expect tips. Taxi rides and at the hairdresser’s are rounded up, toilet staff and cloakroom staff get around 50 cents.
Regional drinks
In restaurants and pubs, people are served at the table. Minors are only allowed to enter restaurants when accompanied by an adult, but do not receive any alcoholic beverages. The opening times are quite different, the restaurants in the holiday resorts and large cities are usually. General Open all day until around midnight or later. Only in Berlin and Hamburg there are no statutory curfew hours.
Beer is the national drink and is offered in all possible strengths and flavors. There are numerous light pilsners and also strong dark beers. The Bavarian wheat beer or wheat beer is particularly refreshing . Unusual specialties are Bavarian G’frornes (frozen beer), Mumme (a bitter-sweet beer without hops) from Braunschweig, Altbier from Düsseldorf, Kölsch from Cologne, light or dark Bock beer from Berlin and Köstritzscher Schwarzbier from Saxony. In summer, especially in southern Germany, numerous beer gardens invite you to linger. The Munich Oktoberfest is the most famous beer festival in the world.
According to programingplease, German wines are among the best in the world. The best known come from the valleys of the Rhine and Moselle, but also the Baden wines, the Franconian wine, and the wines from the growing areas of the Ahr and Nahe as well as the Saale and Unstrut are worth tasting. You should try the Frankfurter Äppelwoi (apple wine), the white Cannstatter in Stuttgart, the dry Würzburger or the German red wines Dornfelder and Trollinger. At the time of the grape harvest, New Wine (fermented grape juice), also called Bizzler or Rauscher, is available in many places. offered with onion cake. In summer and autumn, numerous wine festivals take place in the towns along the German Wine Route and other wine-growing regions. At German Christmas markets, the most famous of which is the Nuremberg Christmas Market, people like to drink mulled wine, sweetened with sugar or honey and flavored with spices .
There are also numerous high-proof drinks: Korn (clear schnapps made from grain or caraway) in the north, bitters and herbal liqueurs from Central Germany, eggnog and brandy from the Rhineland and fruit brandies (cherry brandy, raspberry, plum, pear and mirabelle spirit) from the northern Black Forest.
Minimum age for consuming alcoholic beverages
In Germany you can drink beer and wine from the age of 16 and spirits from the age of 18. In restaurants and pubs, alcohol may not be served or sold to young people under the age of 18.
