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Take comfort in this trip to Yadkinville for a taste of Germany
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The Scoop
The German Restaurant
Location: 2310 Ray T. Moore Road, Yadkinville.
Phone: 463-3330.
Hours: 11 a.m.-2 p.m. and 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.
Reservations: Not usually necessary, but accepted.
Type of cuisine: German comfort food -- spaetzle and schnitzel.
Alcohol: Wine.
Smoking: Allowed inside.
Health-department rating: 97 percent.
Credit cards: Visa and MasterCard.
Atmosphere: Spartan.
The noise: Polka pumped through a boombox.
The wait: None.
Service: No complaints.
Vegetarian-friendly? No.
Be sure to try: Schnitzel, spaetzle; pan-fried potatoes; red cabbage; cake.
Stay away from: Beef goulash; chef salad; French fries.
Will I go back? Ja, wohl.
Published: October 22, 2009
YADKINVILLE
I spent my senior year in high school as an exchange student in Germany, a country not known for cheery, warm weather. Some of my strongest food memories are of the snacks I ate on wet, dark mornings at school during Pause (break) and Grosse Pause (big break -- the closest nose-to-the-grindstone Germans had to lunch; really, I think they were just expected to eat it later at home).
My school didn't have a cafeteria, per se -- instead, there was a little room where we lined up to have an aproned woman refill our coffee cups and hand us chewy, crusty rolls with a wedge of sharp cheese, slices of hard-boiled egg and salty butter tucked inside.
The cheese and egg were because I was a vegetarian. What I was thinking, I can't tell you. Teenage rebellion as I struggled to established my identity and fly away from the nest? Definitely. I also missed out on a lot of tasty wurst, schnitzel and such.
I think of that food as an antidote to gray German days. When you live in such an austere place, you need something comforting to warm you up from the inside.
The German Restaurant takes that country's austerity to a new level, from its straightforward name to its out-of-the-way location, a dark one-story building down a quiet road lined with farmhouses and cornstalks going brown and crisp in fields.
On the way there, you'll pass Carolina Farm Credit ("We know baling, not bailing out"), and then a small sign on the corner of Ray T. Moore Road.
Inside, the tables and chairs have all the charm of a meeting room, with a small boom box pumping out singsong polka music and a wall of shelves lined with beer steins. They look inspiring, except that you can't get beer here, only wine (that's a county regulation), and usually there are only two choices of that, and one of them always seems to be a cloyingly-sweet Riesling. The food here cries out for citrusy Weissbier and crisp lagers.
Owner Hanni Steelman, a German native, knows that -- and she would like to serve beer. It's a tough break running a German restaurant in a dryish county.
Bear with me, though -- there's a reason for coming here.
The menu is spare and simple, and you should stick to German-inflected dishes. The schnitzel is pork, not veal, but it's pounded so thin that covers about half a dinner plate, and beautifully fried, with little grease, and a lovely contrast of juicy meat and breaded exterior. It comes with a wedge of lemon -- yum -- or better yet, buttery handmade spaetzle. It's especially good with creamy dill-flecked sauce.
The rib-bye is OK -- it comes topped with sauteed onions -- but the outside lacks a crusty sear. And the beef goulash is seasoned a little timidly. Better are the succulent shrimp with brandy, drenched in light cream and booze.
Snuggled up beside these mains are hearty sides -- sauerkraut, and red cabbage, softly cooked until it's nearly melted. Best of all are the pan-fried potatoes. They come on the side of some dishes. If they don't come with yours, then order them, because they're the most delicious thing I've eaten here, sliced thin and seared with a thick, golden crust. Ignore the french fries, and even ignore the giant fried onion appetizer (you know, Outback Steakhouse-style). It's not that it is bad. It's that there are other things worth your attention.
Germans have a wonderful word-- Gemuetlichkeit -- that loosely means coziness. Although the German Restaurant's atmosphere is a little lacking in it, these potatoes are like eating it.
Entrees come with pretty plates of dark beets, shredded carrots, green beans and green leaf lettuce dressed in a light vinaigrette that's sour-sweet, and herby, too. Order the chef salad, and you'll get a super-sized version of this vegetation (the flaw is that it's oddly mounded in a stale taco salad shell).
Germans love sweets -- bakeries are practically a national birthright. On my visits to the German Restaurant, there's been just one option for dessert, but a terrific one each time -- homemade yellow cake, once layered with sliced peaches and another time with chopped pineapple. They were both slathered in whipped cream -- fluffy, with just a shadow of sweet.
Steelman said she met and married an American solider in the early 1980s -- that's how she came to Yadkin County. She opened the German Restaurant in 1991. But she closed the restaurant two years ago while she and her husband went through their divorce, she said. She re-opened in February.
At lunchtime, there's currywurst (a very German dish of sliced sausage, spread with curry powder-laced ketchup), and on weekends, specials such as sauerbraten, cabbage rolls and housemade bratwurst. Clearly, it's time for another visit.
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