Classes – Week 2

So I combined Tuesday and Wednesday into 1 post because it’s really just photos of me eating at cool restaurants. Not that there aren’t a ton of super cool restaurants here in Luxembourg, but because I have class in the evening, I don’t want to risk a train or bus being delayed and missing class, so I don’t go outside the city really. But, I had lovely days both Tuesday and Wednesday this week, and I am totally looking forward to Thursday. You’ll see why tomorrow!

Fondue for Two

I made a reservation at a Fondue restaurant, Um Haeffchen, in Bascharage and a local friend wanted to try it, too. This is very fortunate because the restaurant serves both cheese fondue and the Bourguignon meat fondue, which is a fondue in which you place the meat in hot oil instead of boiling broth. Tableside deep frying? Sweet. I was also super excited to try this place because I like to try all the animals, and their ‘Exotic animal platter’ contains, ostrich, zebra, and kangaroo. 

I’ve had fondue in the U.S. a few times. Chocolate fondue is always fun and delicious. But it was interesting to note the differences in culture here. The waiter brought out our fondue pots. The cheese fondue was in a metal pot with a little alcohol burner under it. It was clearly hot, but not dangerously so.  At least not when they brought it out. By the end of the meal, the cheese was bubbling furiously and boiling and I was definitely a little nervous about its delicate balancing act on its little stand. The frying oil fondue, however, was a little more stable on its cooking stand, but also it contained oil that was hot enough to fry things. The hot oil popped several times throughout lunch, spraying drops out of the pot. And then they brought out the meat. There were no instructions. No “One minute for red meat, 2 minutes for poultry” kind of stuff. They either trust you enough to figure it out or know that it’s not their problem if you don’t. 

Cool, so we jumped right in. We were served a salad and some gratin potatoes as our side dishes. There were 4 sauces to choose from for the meats, and they were all delicious. One was a spicy/bbq/mayonaise. Two were herb/mustard sauces. And my favorite was a sour cream and herb sauce. My favorite of the 3 meats was the kangaroo. It was really good, not tough or gamey. None of the meats tasted gamey. But the Kangaroo was most like bison in flavor. Ostrich, I’ve had before, but only as a burger. It was interesting to see how purple the meat is. It looks (and tastes) much more like duck than like chicken. At least the pieces I had were quite dark meat. And then there was the zebra, which again, I really expected to have a strong flavor, but it was pleasant and mild, very similar to just normal beef. 

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Frying the meat and adding the entirely oil/fat based sauces made the meal quite heavy, even though it didn’t appear large before we started cooking. The cheese fondue was, strangely, served with only bread for dipping. No vegetables or apple slices. It was also super heavy. But the cheese itself was absolutely heavenly. It was perfectly prepared, a little herby and a lot wine-y. We really really enjoyed the cheese. 

Class

This week’s class has been far less interesting than last week’s. I’m not going to go into all of it. But I mostly doodled. Tried to sit through it. It definitely felt like a government thing. Like waiting in line at the DMV. 

Dinner

After class, which actually ran until 9:00, I had to find dinner. This was problematic in that, of the places that were still open, they either were completely full (I was refused at 2 restaurants) or they had already closed their kitchen. So I ended up at the White Rose, the most British pub to ever exist. Even they were no longer serving their chips, only pizzas, but I was out of options, so I sat down and had a pint of Killian’s and a pizza. 

The pizza was comical. Like grocery-store frozen pizza. Which again, that’s the this pub’s thing. It’s here for beer, not food. So I’m glad they still served me. The beer was obviously delicious. The pizza was food. It was served with a bottle of sriracha…? 

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The music was playing and soccer was on tv and there were 2-4 guys at the bar at any given time, yelling and cursing at the television. And there was a table of 5 guys at a table yelling and cursing about the musical selections. And those were the only people in the place. No one batted an eye when I entered. They didn’t stop swearing because a lady came in. And no one tried to come talk to me. So all-in-all, great night at the pub. After that, I made myself dinner reservations for after class the rest of the week. 

Wednesday

I started my day off with the usual breakfast, working from bed in my PJ’s, which is so, so awesome. 0 commute time. Warm and cozy. Yay. Then I got up at noon and headed out to my lunch reservation. I took a bus from a stop near my house, but it didn’t actually go to any of the places that I thought it would, and I ended up in Kirchberg. So I took the chance to walk back over the Red Bridge back to Pfaffenthal. I took the bus to save myself time, but ended up walking the same distance I would have if I just walked from home. Oh well. I found a nice wooded walking path from the bridge to the Pfaffenthal Lift.  This is a glass elevator that goes from Luxembourg City up top to the area Pfaffenthal at the bottom. I think it’s Pafentall in Luxembourgish…yep, it is. It’s nice and scenic. Even a part of the floor on the platform before you board the elevator is glass. If the whole floor were glass, it would not be as startling. But coming up to a ledge where the solid floor becomes a glass floor is definitely disorienting if you aren’t paying close attention. 

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I had a little time before my lunch reservation, so I wandered through the Pafendall area. It’s beautiful, like everything else. It’s a super quiet valley with quaint houses and several community gardens. Even one proclaiming itself a paradise for bees. Quiet and peaceful and clean. There is a neat Polish store with lots of trinkets. And a historic mill that’s only open on weekends. There are some old fortifications with stone arch bridges over the little river that flows through the whole place. 

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Lunch

For lunch, I stopped at Bei de Bouwen. This is a small, family-owned restaurant serving traditional Luxembourgish food. I started with an order of a single Gromperekichelcher. It’s actually on the menu in Luxembourgish as such. So I know it’s a real Luxembourgish-style one and not a French one or a German one. Also, thumbs up for allowing orders of single things! I had no one to share an appetizer with, so I was glad to be able to order a singular potato pancake. On to the food: It was delicious!  I don’t know what herbs they put in, but it’s flavorful, which is not a word traditionally used for potatoes. It was so crispy and brown on the outside edges and still soft in the middle. And the applesauce served with it was fantastic. It isn’t sweet…more like they might have literally just mutilated a fresh apple into sauce for me on the spot. Nothing else. Just some mild tartness to offset the heavy potato pancake. A+ on this one!

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There was a lady at the table in front of me, who I assume is Luxembourgish. She had ordered an aperol spritz, with a bottle of spruddlelwasser (I need to add this to my favorite Luxembourgish words – it’s just sparkling water). And as she drank more of the bright orange spritz, she just kept adding more sparkling water. This seemed like a great idea, so I had the same. Since my tastes have changed recently from sweeter drinks to bitter drinks, I’m discovering tons of new things. 

There are traditional Luxembourgish sausages on the menu, but the kniddelen are what I’m here for. Fluffy flour dumplings with bacon and cream and cheese. It’s a Texas-style answer to spaetzle. Go big or go home. At this restaurant, there are 4 varieties of kniddelen, including a 5th ‘special of the day’ variety. Different sauces and toppings, but the same kniddelen. I opt for the special of the day, which is traditional kniddelen in cream/bacon sauce —— baked with raclette cheese on top. Oh yeah. Sadly, there’s also a kniddelen ‘degustation’ menu, which is a sample of all 4 types (sauces), but it’s only for 2 people. I was not at all disappointed with my kniddelen, though. They were huge and dense, yet still fluffy inside. The cream sauce was the right amount of salty and cheesy. Kniddelen are no joke, though. The platter they brought out, a little casserole dish straight from the oven, was huge. I only made it halfway through when they offered a take-out box. (This is not a normal thing, here, so I was very glad for this option). 

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Which, of course, leaves room for dessert. Now, I’m pretty full but at the same time, there’s a digestif on the menu called ‘hunnegdrëpp’, that is a particularly Luxembourgish thing and I really want to try it. So, no coffee for me today. I’m getting trashed at lunch. I order the hunnegdrëpp with the creme brulee a’l’orange. Now, I don’t know if Luxembourg has any traditional desserts. There are tons of patisseries with fancy cakes and pastries, most of which are French. But every ‘traditional Luxembourgish’ restaurant that I have been to has offered some form of ‘unholy gigantic’ creme brulee. So, they are really trying to win me over, as creme brulee is really one of my favorite things ever. The creme brulee was good, not overly orange flavored. But the hunnegdrëpp…. that’s where it’s at. Golden in color, clearly double where the line on the glass is, the honnegdrëpp was exactly what I would have imagined: a liquor version of medovina. It was so sweet, but had such concentrated complex honey flavors. Ugh, I need to find this and bring it home. Love. 

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After lunch, I walked to the Bock Casemates, the city’s old fortifications, and I hiked out of the valley. Who takes the elevator down and then walks up? Me, I guess. It was a pleasant walk and I took some photos of this part of the city. 

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Class

This time, I sat in the back of the class. The people who sat around me actually mocked the teacher as he showed up, 5 minutes late, then left immediately to go get a bottle of water. Class was, as with last night, not super interesting. We did learn how a bill becomes a law. And how parliaments and forming a government works. But I still felt like I was learning about 20 minutes of material over 2 hours. 

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Dinner

After class, I walked to the bus stop, took the bus to the tram, and took the tram to Limpertsberg, where I had dinner reservations. This was my first time taking the tram (it’s new!) and it was super sci-fi high-tech looking. Each car glows a different color. The seats all glow Tron-blue. You know what color this is. It was cool and interesting. Then I arrived at Barrels, a wine and tapas bar, for dinner. 

It’s definitely a modern restaurant, and more in the American style. It wasn’t very relaxing, as the wait staff was just running around, sweating, stressed out, washing dishes, busing tables. And this was before they even took my order. I sat for over 20 minutes before they took my order and if I didn’t know for certain that there’s nowhere else open out here in Limpertsberg, I might have been tempted to give up. But I did not. 

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I ordered a Luxembourgish rose wine, and patatas bravas and grilled padron peppers. After my gut-bomb lunch, this was a perfect dinner. The wine is light and crisp. The potatoes are perfectly cooked, very small portion, and the spicy bravas sauce is absolutely how I remember it from Barcelona. Sip some crisp wine. Take a bite of spicy potatoes or peppers. Sip wine, peppers, wine, peppers, etc. Perfectly complimentary and delicious. I was near the kitchen, so I watched the chefs prepare some very delicious looking tapas. 

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After dinner, I tried to order a glass of dessert wine. The waiter was like ‘kitchen’s closed, no food’, before I even ordered. First off…. I haven’t even asked for food. Second…. it’s kind of your job to do a ‘last call’ to the people who are already in the restaurant. Ugh, whatever. I had my dessert wine, though it was from France, not Luxembourg. The Lux one was $20 a glass. Pffff…..Luxusbourg, amiright? Anyway, it was good. Not as dessert-y as I had hoped, but nice and refreshing. After dinner, I walked home, skipping the tram on the way back.

Tomorrow during the day, the Christmas markets open!!! There will be a ton of food options from little walk-up stands, so I don’t anticipate making any more lunch reservations this trip. Can’t wait to see the markets finally open. Downtown is a mess of heavy equipment hanging lights and setting up little chalets.