Food

I don't know about you, but whereever we go, we are always really looking forward to the food there. German cuisine is slightly different from Irish, more bread, less toast, more pork, less beef, more Italian, less Chinese food. Here are a few notes on what to expect for each meal of the day and where to have it:

Breakfast or "Frühstück"

German Frühstück is quite different to your traditional Irish breakfast. We would have some muesli, yoghurt, a roll or a slice of bread with a bit of "Quark" (a thick kind of cottage cheese) and jam, ham or cheese and maybe (and this is pracitcally the height of it) a cooked egg. No one bothers with frying eggs, sausages, mushrooms, hash browns and bacon - too much effort in the morning. :-)

IE vs DE

So please be aware if you are having breakfast in your hotel, that this might just be a cold buffet and provides no cooked food at all, since this would be perfectly normal in Germany. A better option might be to have breakfast in town, here are a few places I can recommend:

Bagel Sisters, Am Pferdemarkt 8

The Bagel Sisters don't offer a cooked breakfast either (one disappointment after another...) but they do damn good bagels. You can choose between different flavour bagels (sesame seed, poppy seed, blueberry, cinnemon, rye, onion... to name a few) and what you want your bagel with. For a sweet breakfast try the bagel with vanilla quark and fresh fruit salad, it will only set you back a fiver, is delicious and leaves you stuffed for hours (well, at least that's what it does to me :-). There are savoury options too, eg. with creamcheese, smoked turkey and a honeymustard dressing or salmon and cress. It's a place you should consider for something different.

Nikos, Am Kornmarkt 10
Nikos is a busy café on one of the central squares in town. It will be hard to get a space for a big group on a weekend without reserving (you might try the Bitburger Wirtshaus, which is just opposite Nikos, with a bigger group for a full breakfast buffet including scrambled eggs and sausages), but if there is just a few of you try there for a morning feast. From your basic scrambled eggs with bacon (€ 6,30) to the full lot, e.g. the "Bauernhof/ Farm" breakfast (€ 11,50) consisting of scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, mozzarella with tomatoes, 2 rolls, butter, joghurt with fruit salad, orange juice and coffee, their breakfast will leave you ready for the day. You can also pick and mix, e.g if the "Farm" breakfast is too much for one, but too little for two, just ask for a few extra rolls (€ 0.80 each) and or a few croissants (€ 2,20 each) on the side to make it work for 2.

Lunch or "Mittagessen"
A soup and sandwich deal will be very hard to find in Germany. Apart from in lunchboxes we don't really do sandwiches (well Subway, locted on the main square, does). Instead we would have a warm meal, slightly smaller in portion than dinner, and many restaurants advertise a special "Mittagstisch" dish for lunchtime for exceptionally good prices.

 IE vs. DE

Why not try a "Currywurst" (curry sausage) for lunch? The dish was invented in 1949 in Berlin when a businesswoman, having obtained ketchup, worchestersauce and curry from occuping British soldiers, mixed these ingredients together to serve a unique sauce with her fried pork sausages. It has since become an icon for Germans, we love it so much, that a song, a book and even a museum have been created in its honour.

3 Finger Joe, Sieh um Dich
3 Finger Joe is a tiny chipper and does the best Currywurst in town (about € 2,50), but also serves fries and anything else you can serve out of deep fat fryer! :-) Rumour has it his name is "3 Finger Joe" because all his other fingers ended up in sausauges...

Food Court, Trier Galerie
The tiny food court at the back of the shopping mall "Trier Galerie" is good for a quick bite to eat too. There is a Kebap stall, a Wok place that does the most amazing duck in coconut broth and another sausage stand, where you can pick on a scale from 1 -12 how hot you want your currywurst sauce. We really are passionate about our Currywurst! :-)

Schlabbergass, Glockenstraße
One of the restaurants that offers a great lunch deal, e.g. chicken schnitzel with fries and salad for € 7.90 or a  pork steak with fries and salad for € 8.50. In saying that even their all day menu has a lot of meal choices for around € 10. I haven't eaten there in a while, but the portions used to be decent and the food tasty and this doesn't seem to have changed going by more recent reviews on tripadvisor.ie


Dinner or "Abendessen"
The traditional German dinner was pretty much the same as in Ireland: Spuds, meat and vegetables. But like in Ireland our tastes have become a bit more multicultural during the 20th century with continental cuisines (such as Italian and Greek) being more prominent than Asian.