Onion soup and a song

soup

Kunal Purandare visits Stuttgart in Germany and encounters an onion filled with soup and a woman obsessed with Anil Kapoor

It was our first evening in Stuttgart, Germany.The temperature hovered around the 12 degree Celsius mark. We were ushered into the Stuttgarter Stäffele, a restaurant situated in an old building in a small lane and renowned for its authentic German food. The place had wooden floors,wood-panelled walls and ceilings, dim lights, lit candles on tables and soft music playing in the background lending it a warm ambience.

Eager to try local delicacies, Sandra Nörpel, the public relations officer with Stuttgart Marketing who had accompanied us suggested we start with the onion soup. “The soup is served in an onion with lots of cheese,” she said. “It sounds perfect for this kind of weather,” we said unanimously, secretly wondering how soup can be served in an onion.
Nursing our glasses of wine and admiring the old-world charm of the place, we awaited our soup. A little while later, one of the staff arrived with six onion soups. Yes, the soup was indeed served in a large onion, almost half a foot tall and round. The onion stood on a bed of salt in a glass plate, its rim covered with cheese. It didn’t just look fancy but tasted delicious. The soup was followed by Swabian food — noodles with tomato and cheese, which had us patting our bellies in contentment.

Our meal was rounded off by an Iranian-born woman staffer, a big Anil Kapoor fan, who sang Tamaa Tamaa Logey for us.

Old world charm
South-West Germany boasts of many places where one can have vegetarian and non-vegetarian food in settings that date back decades. The Zum Roten Bären, the oldest inn in Germany and the oldest building in Freiburg has a three-level deep wine cellar that takes you back to the twelfth and thirteenth century. The wine and local beer served at the restaurant left us asking for more.
At the Vogtsbauernhof open-air museum in the Black Forest,visitors got to see how people lived and worked in farmhouses 400 years ago. There, in a centuries-old cottage, we were served delicious baked potatoes with bread and cheese spread. For company, we had cows and goats grazing in the nearby farm.

What visit to Germany is complete without a taste of their famous black forest cake? Distinctly different from the ones served in India, this cake was full of cherries and cream. And like the people in Germany, this one was full of sweet goodness.

Soup recipes with Bill & Sheila

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