Taste Of Bavaria

Restaurant Review

Anecdotes & Analysis

It's a long drive from town, but if you have a taste for German food this is the only place you will find it in the area. Taste of Bavaria began as a bakery, an industry at which it's still busy and proficient. Its charming, antique-furnished dining rooms serve a mixed menu of German standards and Creole dishes with a somewhat nouvelle flavor. All of this is delicious enough to make you feel good about the 100-mile-plus round trip. The freshly-baked breads that they generously keep you supplied with are good enough that you'll want to buy some to take home.

Backstory

Restaurants serving German food in the New Orleans area are so rare that even this one, about 60 miles from downtown, is worth noting. It's a quaint collection of small buildings--not particularly Germanic in design, aside from their furnishing--that functions both as a bakery and a café. Especially on the weekends, the primary meal here is breakfast. What constitutes an authentic German breakfast, I know not, but they take a credible shot at it. There's an omelettes of potatoes and sausages that's more than a little good, and a platter of meats, cheeses, and fruit that will be recognized by anyone who's traveled to Europe will recognize as the standard breakfast buffet offering in hotels. But what catches my attention here are two items I remember from trips to Chicago. The German apple pancake of the kind one finds at the Original Pancake House is here, too. It comes out bubbling with apples, cinnamon, and sugar, in a matrix of sweet batter that resembles bread pudding more than a pancake. One of these is more than enough for two people, at $11. Also here is the "Dutch baby," a unique pancake with the texture of a soufflee. Like the apple job, it's baked in a skillet, and as it cooks it grows in thickness and circumference to take on a bowl shape. Very unusual and good. A Taste of Bavaria runs a short list of German specialties at lunch. They're good enough, but I've found the local specialties tend to be even better. It's a charming and unique restaurant, and its bakery produces more than a few items worth packing up to take home.