Crackling in Munich
A beer garden, a glass of beer the size of my head, and a plate of Schweinshaxe that ruined all other pork for me.
A beer garden, a glass of beer the size of my head, and a plate of Schweinshaxe that ruined all other pork for me.
The day after Königssee we ended up in Munich, sitting in a beer garden, very hungry. When in Bavaria, you order the thing Bavaria is famous for. So I ordered Schweinshaxe.
If you haven't had it: it's pork knuckle, roasted slowly for hours until the skin turns into crackling. It comes with a big potato dumpling and a dark gravy that you will want to drink with a spoon. Nobody tells you how big it is. Nobody tells you how loud it is either. The first time your knife goes through that crackling, it actually makes a sound, like breaking a very thin, very delicious window.
Some food you eat. Some food you remember. This was the second kind.
The beer came in a proper Maß, one full litre in a glass so heavy you need two hands for the first few sips. Across the table someone had ordered roast duck, with red cabbage and a slice of orange on the side, and it looked so good I took a photo of that plate too.
The photo at the top of this page says more about that evening than anything I can write. The Schweinshaxe in front. The Maß on the left, already half gone. And behind it, a friend in a blue hoodie, phone in hand, also taking a picture of his food. We were all doing the same thing. It wasn't really about the food anymore. It was about wanting to keep the moment.
Bavarian food is not light food. It is food that assumes you walked up a mountain that morning. Which, in a way, we kind of had.
I've had pork knuckle a few times since. It's never quite the same. Maybe the recipe was special. Or maybe it was the beer garden, the long evening, and the tired, happy feeling after two days of road trip and lakes and churches. I suspect it was mostly that.
— Desly