Dollop of Cream: August 2016

Favourite restaurants in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria

Last summer, we went to the Netherlands, Germany and Austria for the month of August. We cycled, we swam in lakes – and the Blue Danube! – we hiked, and we walked around the big cities, poking into urban nooks and crannies.

And we ate. So well.

Think:

Crusty buns with chewy centres
Perfectly-balanced lunch salads
Crisp croquettes with hearts of melting cheese or tender meat
Chilled cucumber soup with tomato "caviar"
Fresh apricot juice in the afternoon
Creamy German cheesecake with mandarin
Warm plum cake with melting whipped cream
Hot plum dumplings in buttered-breadcrumbs

Speaking of dumplings – and you must speak of dumplings if you speak of Austria – have you heard of kasnocken?

It's pure Alpine comfort food: little dumplings swimming in a sharp cheesy sauce that's baked in an oven skillet with slivers of deep-fried onions on top. I could go back to Bärenwirt in Salzburg just to eat their kasnocken and sip my glass of Grüner Veltliner while I sit out on the patio and watch the green Salzach River flow by.

We ate so many good meals that I thought it was high time I share my favourite restaurants with you.

From the little Wink we happened to see down a side street in Amsterdam – which turned out to be one of the most exquisite meals of our lives – to the photocopied menu at the cozy Gasthaus Jell high above the Danube River to a flight of nine Alpine cheeses at the very modern Meierei in Vienna's city park ...

I've just added my favourite restaurants in Amsterdam, Osnabrück, Cologne, Salzburg, the Wachau and Vienna in the European edition of Hop & Go Fetch It.

And to finish this post, I leave you with two very different dining experiences: sitting in the elegant terrace garden at Loibnerhof in the Wachau wine region and finding amazing dim sum at Mama Lui & Sons in the heart of Vienna.