Last night, me and a few friends from work went downtown to Devour Downtown. This event lasts 2 weeks, and a bunch of the more classy and expensive restaurants have deals on 3 & 4 course meals. So we choose to try out The Rathskeller. The Rathskeller has got a ton of rave and is one of the top German restaurants around. Of course, I was excited, knowing my German roots to try out this amazing menu.
I first ordered a nice dark lager… which actually to my surprise, wasn’t terrible. After this, our waitress brought out a bread basket, with two small loaves of whole grain bread and a huge pretzel. They were served with a mustard sauce and butter.
When the waitress came out with it, she said, “caution, the spicy mustard is spicy”. Well no shit sherlock, I thought, of course it’s gonna be spicy it’s called spicy mustard. So I thought it would just have a slight bite.
This was where I was way wrong. Being super bold, I dipped my pretzel in and took a BIG bite. At first I as like, “eewww mustard”… but that quickly turned into, “omg, I think I’m dying”. The “spicy” slowly crept up on its prey and stung first on the tongue, worked its way to the back of the throat, and up through the nose, were it slowly made your eyes water and took away your breath. This was NOT mustard sauce.. it was straight up horseradish. Now if any of you have ever had anything with horseradish, it does indeed have a bite to it… but this was like multiplied by 1000. And I just so happened to forget that Germans love their “spice”.
Thankfully, that god awful mustard, was followed up by delishh onion dill bread, parmesan schnitzel, german potato salad, a potato pancake, and bread pudding! Those were all fabulous.
But the funniest part of the evening, happened after I was done eating. As the couples that sat down around us got their beverages and their basket of breads, you could hear and see the reaction to the mustard. One guy directly next to me, started coughing loudly, and then practically crying (I thought his wife was going to have to give him the Heimlich). Then after, she so bravely tried a dip to, she exclaimed, “It’s stinging my nose.. I can’t breathe.” Then this older couple across the way, said “Wow now that is pure horseradish.” My thoughts exactly.
So if you are ever in the mood for some German food, hit up The Rathskeller… but trust me, when the waitress says “The spicy mustard is spicy”…she isn’t kidding!
Peace. Love. Germans.
hayleanichole 