We were so excited to be able to eat some German food for Oktoberfest. As soon as I saw that Greyhound was offering some dishes for the fall festival, we had to go. The folks who run The Greyhound and Del Porto are very skilled restaurateurs. I knew it would maybe be the best version of Oktoberfest fare available locally. And it was.
There wasn’t a lot on the menu, but we found something. Two of the four dishes are regulars on the Greyhound menu. The Pork Schnitzel is part of their bizarre around-the-world offerings every day. We already had that one, so today we just ordered the housemade spaetzle served Alfredo-style and made with Gruyere and Swiss cheeses instead of Parmesan.
For our entree, we split the housemade bratwurst that was served with cottage potatoes and sauerkraut with a small bit of spicy coarse mustard. And we had to get the Black Forest Cake for dessert, also a menu regular plucked out and included on this special menu.
The Kaesaspaetzle came quickly. It was a bowl of light noodles in a cream sauce of Swiss cheese and Gruyere, Thin strings of purple onion decorated the top of this. These were fried and some of the crispy coating had separated from the onion.
I was impressed they were making their own spaetzle, and these noodles were flimsy. The entire pile needle a pinch of salt. That’s not to say this was bad, because we are talking about noodles, cream, and cheese here. Ipso facto delicious.
The housemade bratwurst came as a duo and was served over the cottage potatoes. These links were seared with a little crust. The potatoes underneath were basic cubed and fried potatoes tossed in caramelized onions that included fried lardons. A little mound of warm but unadorned sauerkraut sat beside the potatoes and the mustard filled out the remaining corner of the plate.
These brat links were perfect, and cooked perfectly. So were the potatoes, which had the wonderful perk of being loaded with lardons. Lardons, like its original slab bacon, make everything better.
As a passionate consumer of sauerkraut, this was basic but good enough high-quality sauerkraut. And the spicy coarse mustard rounded this plate out very nicely. This was outstanding and far superior to the usual Oktoberfest options everywhere, that scream mediocrity.
Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte was much smaller than I expected it to be. This cake is made in-house with 6 cherries and is good enough to make me like Black Forest Cake. I was surprised that this cake had a bottom crust to it. The cake layers were moist and densely dark. Another outstanding specimen of basically ordinary German food.
It’s Oktober so one has to have some German food in honor of Oktoberfest, right? I was getting anxious about this as the month wore on. Who knew I’d find the best version of this so close to home? A convenient and delicious discovery.
