One Night in Frankfurt

A rushed exit from quiet little Zell, confusion at the train station as we struggled to find out where to return the rental car, and an extra day's charge because we didn't do it in time. Our last day in Germany started out a little rough.

But then we had a quick lunch - a juicy, sweet hunk of roast pork on delightfully crusty bread with spicy German mustard - sent Heidi and Andrew on the rest of their journey (seeing old friends in other parts of Deutschland for another week) and strolled on over to a quiet little pub serving big frothy glasses of the local beer: Binding.

And so a hectic, stressful day gave way to a leisurely, languid afternoon.

We parked ourselves on a picnic bench in front of the pub. After a while I stepped in to use the rest room, meeting a couple of gentlemen at the bar on my way back out. I would guess they were in their sixties, possible pensioners enjoying a nice afternoon at the pub, one with a bushy salt and pepper beard and the other with wispy white hair and bad teeth.

"What are you doing in Frankfurt?" Wispy Hair asked.

"Just visiting," I replied. "With my wife and my brother. We had been staying in the Mosel but we have to go home tomorrow."

Wispy looked skeptical, "The Mosel? Must have been boring. Only Germans go there." This caused a bit of an awkward silence, until Bushy Beard spoke up.

"Have you had the Grüne Sosse?" In a gravelly voice with a German accent one imagines only exists in the movies.

"Excuse me?"

"The Grüne Sosse" It sounded like GROONA SAWSA. "It is one thing Frankfurt can call its own. Meat with a green sauce.The best place for it is just around the corner."

"Yes, you really must. It is delicious," chimed in Wispy, with more warmth than I had expected.

I thanked the gentlemen for their advice, and directly told my travelling companions. We agreed that this was a must do, and a good thing too, because as we were leaving (after a second Binding and a subsequent trip to the restroom), Bushy Beard stopped me with a mighty hand on my shoulder.

"Don't forget about the Grüne Sosse."

Indeed, I did not, and a few hours later we made good on our promise.

This is the place around the corner - Zum Gemalten Haus. Frankfurt is a modern, gleaming city. Financial capital of Europe. Sleek and somewhat sterile. Stepping into this restaurant was like stepping back in time, back to before the city had been levelled at the end of World War II and rebuilt into the place it is today. It was as charming a space as anywhere I've been. And home to our Grüne Sosse experience.

There it is, in all its Teutonic glory, an enormous hunk of beef cradled in a creamy/mayonnaise-y green sauce and served with some big-ol' fluffy potatoes.

Beef not your thing? Looking for something a bit lighter? Try these:

Two hard-boiled eggs in Grüne Sosse, for those watching their cholesterol.

I ate every thing on my plate. Every little morsel of meat and every drop of sauce. Marissa ate her whole plate of eggs. It was a delicious meal and, though I know you won't believe me, it was not as heavy as it looked.

The meat was tender and succulent, and the green in the sauce was a refreshing mix of all manner of herbs. The combination was perfect. What a great meal to close out our trip to the Mosel Valley and the surrounding region.

Every great meal deserves a great digestif. I asked our server at Zum Gemalten Haus what he recommended. He suggested Calvados, and I knew just where we should go to get it: back to our little afternoon pub, home of Wispy Hair and Bushy Beard.

Alas, they were no longer there, for which part of me was glad. It had been several hours since we had met, and I was happy to see they hadn't spent all of that time drinking. But I was also disappointed, because I knew they would have been happy we had taken their advice and that it had been one of our most memorable meals in Germany. I drank my Calvados in their honor.

We wandered back to our hotel, a modern and stylish place on the other side of the train station and the red-light district, where Marissa and I got up early the next morning for our flight back to San Francisco. My brother went on to Madrid, and Heidi and Andrew were on their way to Berlin. It had all gone too quickly, but it had all been fantastic. And it had finished with a great recommendation from two older gents sitting at a pub on a weekday afternoon.