The Best Schnitzel In Town

On November 21, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Life In Germany5 Comments

Living in Bavaria, there’s a lot of great opportunities to eat schnitzel. For the uninitiated, schnitzel is meat that’s been flattened with a mallet, breaded, and fried. Typically, it’s served with a slice of lemon and some form of potatoes. And it’s delicious.

Wiener Schnitzel is the Vienna version, and it’s traditionally made with veal. The majority of the schnitzel available around here, is usually made with pork though. To indicate pork, it would be called Wiener Schnitzel vom Schwein or Schnitzel Wiener Art. The naming conventions are all pretty confusing to me, actually.

Other meat is sometimes used- I’ve had turkey Schnitzel, for example, and I’ve seen soy and seitan variations for the vegetarian set. For the most part, though, veal and pork are the main types of Schnitzel to be had.

While I’ve had a lot of delicious Schnitzel here, two restaurants stand out.

The second best Schnitzel I’ve had in Regensburg was from Zum Steirer Eck, an Austrian restaurant on Ludwigstraße in the Altstadt. The restaurant is bigger than it looks from the outside, and they have a small open courtyard during warmer months. The Schnitzel in question was cut into strips, with pumpkin seeds on the crust, and served atop a very delicious salad.

The very best, most delicious Schnitzel I’ve had in Regensburg was at Kreuzschänke at Kreuzgasse 25, another local favorite with a large beer garden for warmer weather.

Not only is the Schnitzel at Kreuzschänke delicious, but the portions are huge! The plate in the photograph below is the small Schnitzel. The fork to the left of the plate is full sized, not miniature.

The next photo is the large Schnitzel at Kreuzschänke, seen here being consumed by Robert, a local connoisseur of all things Schnitzel. You have to be an extremely hungry person to demolish one of these, but it’s so, so worth it.

Do you have a favorite local Schnitzel restaurant?

Wynwood Art District, Miami

On November 18, 2013November 21, 2013 By StevenIn The U.S.5 Comments

Despite living in South Florida for most of my life, I’d never been to the Wynwood Art District before this trip. Amelie took me down there earlier this week because she thought I would enjoy it, and she was right.

Wynwood is a neighborhood in Miami, a little bit north of downtown Miami. The Wynwood art district contains over seventy galleries, five museums, three collections, seven art complexes, twelve art studios and five art fairs. There are monthly art walks, and more.

The really cool thing about Wynwood, though, is the walls. The outer walls of the buildings throughout Wynwood are painted by artists. On a regular basis, the walls are white-washed, and the cycle of art continues.

This next wall was done by Sheperd Fairey, the guy who created the Obama HOPE poster and some other well known art memes.

Some of the art is colorful.

Some of it is really colorful. This one is my favorite from the area. I love how the paint “bleeds” onto the sidewalk and over the rocks in front of it.

I can’t look at this one without squealing, “Yellow pig!”

This piece isn’t a painting- the face is carved into the wall. The picture that follows is a close-up of the eye.

The largest concentration of artsy walls is guarded by flat tin alien dudes.

The design on this one is pretty nifty.

I walked past this three times without noticing the woman’s genitalia- I was too focused on tthe butterflies in the upper right corner. It wasn’t until I looked at the picture on my computer that I saw the other bits.

On this piece, the very first thing I noticed was the key in the bottom-most hand. I still wonder what it opens.

This cafe is fronted by very colorful apparitions that look like they’re trying to escape. The little red one furthest to the left looks like he’s making it.

It took me .0003 seconds to notice (and laugh at) the little yellow dude’s penis, because I am apparently ten years old.

I think an octopus would make an amazing plumber.

I didn’t spot the kitty right away when I walked by this one. There are actually several cats hiding on this wall, and I didn’t notice any of them until Amelie pointed them out to me.

The “Road Trip” painting is across the street from Panther Coffee, a pretty great place to stop for some java or tea.

Also across the street from Panther Coffee: Someone hung this little guy up on the overhead lines.

Ah, Miami life. A man walks his two little dogs. I dig the tiny sweater on the second dog.

When I was growing up, ice cream trucks would roam the neighborhoods playing a jingly version of “The Entertainer” and enticing us to eat sugary confections. In these modern times, the ice cream and the jingly musical sound are the same, but the trucks have been replaced by pedal power.

Even on the side streets, Wynwood has some amazing work. The clouds on this explosion of color are fantastic.

There’s a fine, fine line between art and graffiti. I’m not entirely sure which side of that line this wall occupies.

As we left, the clouds started to get a little bit ominous. This has the added bonus of making this last photo look amazing.

Does your city have a dedicated art district?

Family Time In Florida

On November 14, 2013November 14, 2013 By StevenIn The U.S.2 Comments

I’ve been in South Florida now since the first of November, and I just have a few days left to soak it all in before I head back to Germany. (Just in time for Christkindlmarkt season, though!)

The centerpiece of this visit home was my father’s 75th birthday party. This picture contains my immediate siblings and my dad. It’s rare for all of us to be in a photo at the same time these days. Dad really doesn’t look 75, does he?

Another highlight of this trip has been seeing my niece again. She was born less than a year before I moved to Germany, and she’ll be three in a few weeks. I’ve missed two thirds of her life so far, but she warmed up to me pretty quickly. I suspect she recognized in me another three year old to hang out with.

Are you close to your family?

Germany’s Most Dangerous Export: Kinder Surprise Eggs

On November 11, 2013November 12, 2013 By StevenIn The U.S.11 Comments

Whenever I go from Germany to the US, people ask me to pick up certain items and bring them with me. I’ve brought German beer and chocolate to the US. I’ve taken Abercrombie & Fitch sweatpants back to Germany. I try to fill the requests when I can, but on this trip, there’s one request that I had to refuse.

I was asked to bring Kinder Überraschung, also called Kinder Surprise Eggs. A Kinder Egg contains a layer of chocolate surrounding a layer of white chocolate, which contains a toy inside a small plastic chamber. The toys are often cross-marketed, so you might see a Barbie Kinder Egg one week, and a Star Wars Kinder Egg the next.

I had to say no, however, because they’re entirely illegal in the United States.

Kinder eggs have been illegal in the United States for 75 years, even though they’re only forty years old. (They were first made in Italy in 1973 as Kinder Sorpresa.) The fine for bringing in these black market chocolates can be as high as $2,500 per egg.

The reason for this illegality is the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which says that food sold in the United States cannot have an embedded non-food item. A sample alert that specifically covers the Kinder eggs says that “imbedded non-nutritive objects in these confectionary products may pose a public health risk as the consumer may unknowingly choke on the object.”

I’ve already misplaced the report which sourced this next detail, but United States Customs and Border Protection said that in 2011, they seized more than 60,000 Kinder Eggs from travelers’ baggage and from international mail shipments. That’s an awful lot of hot chocolate.

The long-standing illegality of Kinder Eggs has actually prompted a new product in the United States. The Choco-Treasure is almost exactly the same as a Kinder Egg, but the Choco-Treasure gets around the law by having a plastic seam visible on the egg. Since the non-food portions are not completely embedded in the chocolate, the new eggs aren’t illegal in the US. I haven’t tried a Choco-Treasure egg, but I suspect that comparing Choco-Treasure to Kinder Überraschung is a lot like comparing Mr. Pibb to Doctor Pepper- one is just a cheap imitation of the other.

Have you tried a Kinder Egg? What toy did you get from inside?

The Grillhouse in Regensburg

On November 7, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Life In Germany1 Comment

I’m taking a page from the Sherbet and Sparkles playbook for this post. She sometimes writes small restaurant reviews for places she’s been to around Frankfurt and I think that’s kind of a nifty idea.

The weekend before I traveled to the US, I went with my partner-in-crime Jenny and her boyfriend Robert to The Grill House, in Regensburg. I hadn’t heard much about this place, but I was entertained by the fact that they chose purposely to use the English spelling of house in their name.

Inside, the walls have art that makes my ten-year-old brain giggle endlessly- the large wall painting is clearly a cow being mounted by a horse. The opposite wall is covered in smaller illustrations, many of which also show various forms of country western humping. This amuses me terribly.

The menu included some delicious sounding burgers and steaks, as well as chicken dishes. We each got a steak- mine was the smaller filet with grilled vegetables.

The steaks come with sauces to add flavor. We got one of each type. I can’t remember what they all were, but the green one was a chimichurri (heavy on the cilantro- yum!), and the bottom three were thyme, red wine, and honey-whiskey, which I thought was particularly delicious.

All three of us demolished our steaks- they were delicious. The Grill House has officially moved up to be the single best steak I’ve eaten in Europe. Anyone I’ve talked to about steak in Germany knows that this is a big deal- German steaks tend to be less delicious than steak in the US. This place was absolutely delicious.

The Grill House can be found at:

Prüfeninger Straße 98/
Ecke Lilienthalstresse
93049 Regensburg
Open 11am-Midnight.

For reservations, call 0941 / 38 38 6606