Annnnd We’re Back!

After a day of lounging and letting myself recover, I am ready to take on the world again. I slept until noon (which never happens). Even then, I stayed in bed, doing some… mildly frustrating… work things until 4 p.m.  I found a restaurant outside of town and decided to venture out for dinner. Nothing ever goes as planned. 

The Plan

There is a “National Brewery” of Luxembourg, Bofferding.  I’m not sure if this is an official designation or just what they call themselves. They do not offer tours in the winter months, bummer, but I think you can still visit and sample beers. This is definitely the most prevalent beer in all of Luxembourg, and I’ve had their beers a few times already.  I wasn’t super jazzed about trying them again, but felt compelled to at least see the brewery as a tourist. However, in the same town, there is also a place called Beierhaascht. This is a brewery/restaurant/butcher.  And not a butcher in the general sense of just cutting up animals. A butcher in the sense that they also make a large variety of cured meats.  They serve these cured meats in their restaurant as charcuterie plates. Ok, now I’m interested.  I figure I’ll take the bus at 4:30, get to this town by 5 (google says it’s a 20 minute bus ride), maybe have a beer at the Bofferding place, and then I made a 6:30 reservation at the Beierhaascht. 

Reality

Any time I start off by describing my plan, one can rest assured that things did not go to plan. I made it to the bus stop on time. A bus showed up at the appointed time. I got on the bus. But…. there was no sign inside the bus to indicate which bus it was. There are television screens inside the buses that tell the next 3 stops, but this one was broken. So I decided to take my chances and stayed on the bus, while carefully watching google maps to be sure we were at least generally going in the right direction. Here, I got the most authentic Luxembourg experience. One of the things it is also famous for is its traffic.  The city of Luxembourg sits atop a beautiful mountain. And the only ways in and out are a few bridges. And so every day, rush hour is an unholy nightmare. Hours and hours of traffic jams as everyone who lives outside the city tries to get home. Well, today I learned that Google thinks that buses are like some sort of magical unicorn that travel straight lines, not on roads, and are immune to traffic. If I ask google for directions as if I’m driving myself, it says 45 minutes. If I say I’m on the bus, google says 20 minutes. So… it’s fine. I’ll still be there on time for dinner…. 

Traffic is beyond gridlocked. I sit in Bay Area traffic every day and I have never seen anything like this. I could easily have walked out of Luxembourg City faster than the bus was able to get out. Then I would have had to just wait for the bus and ride the bus to the next town anyway, so that is impractical, but I cannot overstate how very little we moved in the hour I was on this bus. Eventually the bus I am on reaches the end of its line, as it does not go all the way to where I am trying to go. Bummer. However, we are still on the same street, so I am able to get off and wait for the original bus I was supposed to take. I had been on the 213, not the 215. The 215 arrives within 5 minutes, and it is clear why I missed it the first time: the buses aren’t on time either. They are delayed by traffic, so whatever time they show up is what time they get there. Fun. This bus at least has a functioning screen with all of the info I need to know that I am going to the right stop. At this point, however, I am definitely going to be late for my dinner appointment, and will certainly not have time to go to the other brewery. I telephone them from the bus and they assure me they will hold a table for me. 

• 

• 

Dinner

7:20 p.m.: I have finally arrived. The place I am trying to go is really the only business near this stop and it is a brightly lit, glowing beacon in the night. It is also a hotel, so it’s rather large, and in huge red letters it says Brewery, Butchery, Restaurant.  Yes, I have arrived. This is an interesting and peculiar thing I have noticed about the Luxembourgish culture. It is unabashedly indulgent. I’m not sure if it’s just a general difference of translation or if I’ve been in California too long, but it is very in-your-face with the whole meat thing. Restaurants called “Red Beef”, “The Beef Club”, “Butchery”. There’s a very aggressive focus on the animal products offered. If you are vegetarian, maybe there is salad, and even less likely, there might be a fried cheese dish, but for vegans, do not even bother. Which is fine. I mean, I love meat and have been wallowing in the indulgent food options here, so this is far from a criticism. It is just an observation that, in the US, we have this expectation that all businesses must cater to everyone. And here, it seems, if you don’t like the food, you can just go elsewhere. There are definitely enough food options, though I admittedly have not canvassed the area for vegetarian food. 

• 

• 

Anyway, I arrived at the Beierhaascht and they have delightful window signs proclaiming their beer “Lëtzebéier”, which is a play on words in Luxembourgish. To say a Luxembourgish person (a Luxembourger), you would say “Lëtzebeurger”, where the ‘g’ is kind of just an inflection point and it’s pronounced “luts-a-boy-er”, whereas “Lëtzebéier” would be pronounced “luts-a-bay-er”. 

I go into the restaurant and it isn’t even half full. I’m sure they were amused at my repeated calls to reserve a table. I am seated at my table and the waitress asks what I would like to drink. I have seen photos online of a flight of beers, so I ask for that (having not seen the menu yet), and she seems confused but brings back a small sampler of each one. Now, part of the reason for this journey is that they make a brown ale and a stout called “The Black Stuff”, but sadly both of those are out of stock right now. Bummer. So she brings me a flight of light/pilsner, Belgian, and amber. You can see in the photo that they are not appreciably different in color. They are, however, quite different in alcohol content with the Belgian clocking in at 6.3%. I’m not ready to end my night after 1 beer, so I don’t order one of those. The ‘amber’ is like a more concentrated version of the light beer. Same golden color profile, so unlikely to contain any roasted malts, and slightly higher alcohol. So I decided to order the light beer with my dinner. Who have I become? 

• 

• 

Again, kind of wanting to have the kniddelen, but feeling more like I should have the house-made cured meats while I’m here. Portions are always large, so there isn’t really a way to have 2 things, even if one is an appetizer. So I decide to order the raclette. This is where my 3-hour bus adventure proves to be worth all the hassle. The waitress asks if I’ve had it before and I said yes. She lets me know that it’s not the kind of raclette where they make it in a little tray. It’s a part of a wheel of cheese that they melt.  I’m like, ok, now this sounds less like a warning and more of an advertisement. Yes, let’s do this. So, knowing I guess, that it’s a lot of work, she accepts my order and goes to the back. Then she comes back and plugs in an electric cord, leaving the other end on my table. Now I am excited because I have no idea what is going to happen next. 

• 

• 

My expectation is that she will bring out a raclette machine, use it to melt a layer of cheese, scrape off the cheese onto the potatoes and such for me, and then leave. But reality was so much cooler than that. She brought out all of the accoutrements for the cheese: a bowl of cocktail onions and gherkins, a plate of selected cured meats from the butcher, a basket of bread, and a bowl of boiled potatoes with herb butter. Then she returns with the raclette machine. It’s a fairly large appliance that accepts a wedge of cheese, and has 2 heated plates that melt the cheese on either side. She shows me how to operate it. It has no power switch; the only way to speed up or slow down the melting is to adjust the hot plates’ distance from the cheese. There’s a plate underneath the cheese that will just constantly be filled with melted cheese for you to eat with all the extras. And that’s it. Eat as much cheese as you want. Unplug the machine when you’re done.

The cheese melts soooo fast. I immediately disabled the side farthest from me. And I was even able to move the side I was using a little away from the cheese, so I could just melt the cheese, but avoid making any of those brown bubbly spots. Tina does not like scorched cheese. This is a point of contention in our household. 

• 

• 

(Mind Blown). Fondue is so passé. Someone needs to open a raclette place in the Bay Area right now and give me a small cut of their millions of dollars in profit. I’ll even come work there as the meat curer/butcher/brewer, whatever is needed. I proceeded to take a million selfies with my cheese melting machine because I am a giddy child right now.  I don’t know that I’ve ever had a meal that brought so much gleeful delight. It was just fun and new and interesting.  

• 

• 

• 

After eating as much cheese as I could finish, I turned off the machine and let it cool down. The waitress packed away my meats and potatoes for lunch tomorrow, and cleared the table. Then I spent 15 or 20 minutes digesting, relaxing, finishing my beer, chatting with colleagues on hipchat, and chatting with Joe. There is no pressure in Europe to vacate a table at a restaurant. Eating out is supposed to be a luxurious, relaxing experience, something you don’t do every day (unless you’re me right now). So you take your time. After a bit, the waitress offers me the dessert menu, and of course I have to look at it. They offer a creme brulée with beer, so I have to try it. Everything else was the usual assortment of sorbets and ice creams, a cheese plate, or more traditional cakes. 

• 

• 

They bring out the creme brulee and again, I am surprised by the food at this restaurant. This is not a creme brulee for 1 person. This is not a 4 or 8- ounce ramekin with a heavy, delicious dessert inside. Oh no, this is a freaking soup bowl of creme brulee. Any other day, I would have been also gleeful at this, but I was quite full of cheese and not sure how I would get through the entirety of this delectable offering. Not to fret, though. I did manage to get through it all. It was delicious, not overly beer-flavored, but the slight bitterness was actually a good complement to the burned sugar crust, though the burned sugar was a little over-burned and blackened in spots. I’m guessing there’s also some amount of liquor or the beer is concentrated somehow because it definitely tasted alcoholic. Anyway, after dessert, I managed to catch the bus back to Luxembourg city, which they just call “The City”, just like home. So I got back to the city, walked 15 minutes home, and promptly slept off all that cheese. <3

• 

•