I just returned from a brief work trip to Hamburg, and had hoped to squeeze in a bit of hot food action for you little schweinfleische lovers.
From what I saw of Hamburg, it seems like a very nice city. It is the third largest port in Europe according to Wikipedia, you can even go on a port tour by boat. In fact this is what the local suggest tourists do!
Despite being 100km from the sea, it is famous for its fish and has a huge fish market, and this is where prostitutes from the Rieperbahn will go for breakfast (no jokes about fish smells please).
We were stationed in the posh Hamburg suburb of Eppendorf, home to the medical school and hospital – and the epicentre of the recent E. coli O104 outbreak (which is why we were visiting). At its peak they had over 5 wards devoted to infected patients, and the hospital was closed to any other admissions. They had over 200 people on dialysis, all machines working 24 hours a day.
Anyway, what about the food?
We had lunch at the hospital staff canteen – which was very nice, the building styled a bit like a sexy sci-fi colony complete with staff working in white figure-hugging cotton uniforms. But – we’d come on vegetarischen Donnerstag! Bummer. They did have some nice saukerkraut though.
We were taken to a very nice restaurant for dinner called Schauermann which was in the modern european style. There was a choice of rottfish (actually ocean perch) or lamb. We also had a great bottle of German wine which I will try and seek out. We finished with a glass of Vogelbeere schnapps – which I have now translated as rowan berry! All very jolly.
Anyway this morning I slept in and that left only 3 hours to find some sausages. The excellent Florian Siepert wrote me a handy little guide to foodie Hamburg. But as our flight back was at lunchtime, most of those were not going to work. But I did set off determinedly by foot to find some sausages, aiming to get to the exciting sounding Bioland Frisch-Fleische.
But in the event, I didn’t make it. By great coincidence there was a lovely little market along the Isestrasse, under the railway line. I had a lovely hour pottering around. There was an abundance of fresh and smoked fish. One stall was selling grey shrimp by the kilo. I bought some smoked eel, and noticed they were doing little filled rolls with glistening pickled herring with some lovely sweet onion. A great little breakfast treat.
I picked up a few interesting looking sausages along the market, and before long it was time to make my way to the airport.
So I guess I failed you – dear reader – this time in Hamburg. But I think it won’t be too long before we go back and do the place justice, it definitely seems like a great food destination.