Cuisine of Alsace
Alsace cooks in German as much as in French, and it does it generously. The dishes are built on pork, cabbage, river fish, potatoes and Riesling, the bakeries smell of brioche and cinnamon, and a proper winstub will feed you more than you ordered.
Choucroute
Salted cabbage, fermented; for centuries it was the only vegetable available through the winter. Served warm with cold cuts, smoked meats or fish. It varies enormously from kitchen to kitchen — in one place it is mild, almost like a fresh cabbage salad, in the next sharply sour — so it is worth trying more than once before deciding.
On menus, choucroute garnie 4 viandes means four kinds of meat and runs about 22€; five is common too, and choucroute royale carries more again, around 25€. The meat can include schiffala (smoked shoulder), quenelles de foie, smoked bacon, ham hock, white grilling sausages, knacks or Strasbourg sausages, smoked sausage, blood sausage, pork ribs or kassler. There is also a version made with salted turnips instead of cabbage, navets salés.
Flammekueche and the baked dishes
Tarte flambée, Flammekueche in Alsatian: very thin dough with crème fraîche, onion and bacon, baked fast and eaten by hand. Ordered by the board, shared, and followed by another.
Baeckeoffe — literally «baker’s oven» — is pork, beef and lamb layered with potatoes, soaked in white Alsatian wine and baked in a heavy earthenware pot sealed with dough. Versions differ: some are a fine casserole, some a plain plate of roughly cut vegetables and meat. About 19–20€ a portion. Drink Riesling with it.
Tartiflette comes from Savoy, where it is made with Reblochon; Alsace bakes its own version with Munster and bacon — the cheese smells alarming and behaves beautifully in the oven.
Poultry, game and river fish
Coq au Riesling. The legs are browned with garlic and shallot, then simmered for half an hour in Riesling and stock with thyme, usually with mushrooms added. The sauce is finished with flour, cream and egg yolk.
Civet is hare or rabbit marinated in white wine and stewed, served with spätzle — the local egg noodles — or pflüte, potato dumplings.
Matelote puts several river fish into a Riesling and cream stew. Carp has been farmed in the ponds of the Sundgau since the 12th century and is served fried in breadcrumbs, by the metre, with chips. And bouchée à la reine is a puff-pastry case filled with a béchamel of meat and mushrooms, served hot with spätzle or tagliatelle.
Charcuterie
Knacks are the smoked Strasbourg sausages that snap when you bite them, which is what the name means. Presskopf is a head cheese in vinaigrette; lewerknepfle are liver dumplings; wädele is a braised ham hock, usually in beer or Riesling. Foie gras belongs here too — Strasbourg has made it since the 18th century, and the local habit is to serve it in a pastry crust.
Fleischschnecke, the «meat snail», rolls minced meat into fresh pasta dough, slices it into spirals and fries them — a butcher’s way of using up the roast, and now a delicatessen staple.
On the side
Spätzle, short irregular egg noodles, go with everything. Bibeleskäs is a soft white farm cheese flavoured with garlic, parsley, chives or onion, eaten with potatoes. Roïgebradeldi is fried potato with onion and bacon. There is an Alsatian potato salad with vinegar and onion, a tarte à l’oignon, a tourte alsacienne of minced pork in pastry, and raifort — horseradish — beside the boiled meats. Munster, washed-rind and pungent, is the cheese; ask for cumin seeds with it.
Baking and sweets
Kougelhopf is the fluted brioche with raisins and almonds, eaten at breakfast and on Sundays; the savoury version with bacon and walnuts comes with the aperitif. Bredele are the small Christmas biscuits, in dozens of shapes and flavours, that appear in every bakery from late November.
Männele, little brioche men, are baked for St Nicholas on 6 December. Quetsche, the purple damson, becomes tarts, jam and eau-de-vie. And in winter every market square sells vin chaud, hot spiced wine, which is the reason half the region’s Christmas markets stay standing after dark.
Where to eat and what to drink
The winstub is the institution: a wood-panelled wine tavern serving local dishes in large portions, often at shared tables. Order by the pichet rather than the bottle.
Alsace is white-wine country — Riesling, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer, Sylvaner, plus the sparkling Crémant d’Alsace — and each dish above has its usual partner: Pinot Blanc with bibeleskäs, Riesling with baeckeoffe and choucroute, Gewurztraminer with Munster and foie gras. The Alsace wine route runs 170 km past most of the producers, and French wines covers the rest of the country.
For the region itself, see Alsace; for its administrative neighbours, the cuisine of Grand Est; and for the rest of the country, French cuisine.
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