The German Gymnasium provides a perfect culinary Christmas work out

Kholrabi and beets

Back in the dim and distant past (late 1999 to early 2000, to be precise), I worked in Camden and travelled there daily via two buses. The second was a 214 and I was often joined by a colleague at the time.

He was German – complete with huge, soup-straining moustache. And, as the bus turned down Pancras Road, he introduced me to the German Gymnasium – the first purpose-built gymnasium in England, and key in the development of athletics in this country.

Designed by Edward Gruning, it was built in 1864-65 for the German Gymnastics Society, at a time when there was a large German population in the city – and it was funded solely by that community and was used by both men and women (women’s classes were first held there in 1866).

It ceased to be used for its original purpose at some point before WWII and subsequently played a variety of roles, from office space to storage space to exhibition space.

But, with the regeneration of the whole King’s Cross area over recent years, the building has, in the past 18 months, been reborn as a cafe, bar and restaurant, with a menu that more than nods at German and central European cooking.

The Other Half and I, having some schooling in German food, had always intended to visit, but you know how it is, and it was only on a work-related Christmas lunch today that we finally made it.

It’s a wonderful space: cafe and bar on her ground floor and the restaurant at mezzanine level. Amazingly, it manages to feel spacious but without any overt echo.

The OH started with a smoked pork sausage salad, which I am assured was very good, while I opted for marinated kohlrabi, sweet and sour beets, horseradish and rocket.

There was too much rocket. However, the beets were beautiful – so earthily sweet – and the kohlrabi, while thick, was very, very tasty. It’s probably the first time I’ve really appreciated horseradish, and it complimented those sweet beets so well. All in all, it was remarkably light, yet perfect for the season.

Venison Baden Baden

For a main, we both opted for Venison “Baden Baden”, which was centred around two lovely pieces of meat (cooked rare, as asked), and with sprouts, a halved pear stuffed with sharp lingonberries, Germany’s noodle, Spätzle, and a juniper jus.

This was simply wonderful, seasonal food. The flavours sing – the pear and lingonberries are such a good compliment to the meat, cutting through its sweetness at slightly different levels, while the Spätzle was not overdone and added a fine extra component, and the jus was simply divine.

Accompanied by a glass of Gewürztraminer from Italy, this was a truly excellent dish.

For dessert, I opted for a sea buckthorn mousse, with a pumpernickel ice cream, Glühwein gel, spiced sponge and pistachio shards – and it was also a delight.

Now, I’m a raving Germanophile – as regular readers here will know – but this is a fascinating restaurant, taking German food and showing its haute cuisine side for sceptical Brits.

It’s worth noting that we were some such diners – who had little familiarity with the reality of German food and only a British stereotype, and they were equally impressed if certainly more surprised.

Service was excellent and, to be frank, it was the best Christmas work-related lunch I’ve ever had.

I doubt it’ll be the last time that the OH and I dine there – and I’d heartily recommend it to anyone.

My late German friend, though he might have found the food itself a little fussy, would have bristled with delight at the thought that such a building, with such a German heritage, is now showing Brits just how good German food can be.

Food, glorious food. Or not

Knights and ketchup

It was the best of England; it was the worst of England. It was a reminder of why we should take more breaks in the UK – and a reminder of why we don’t.

With The Other Half in recuperative mode, and both of us having ditched the tobacco, we decided, at short notice, to grab a long weekend away from London – to somewhere where we might stand a chance of breathing clean air.

It perhaps says something about pollution in the Metropolis that we chose a spot not far from a nuclear power station.

We had picked Rye on the basis of a Saturday morning conversation over coffee, which had started with me musing: “Where was it that the BBC filmed the Map and Lucia that they showed last Christmas?”

Google has its purposes. The location for filming turned out to be Rye, where Map and Lucia author EF Benson had lived for some time and even been the mayor.

Not only that, but the Tilling of those stories is Rye, with Mallards being Lamb House, where Benson himself had lived, and which had housed the American author Henry James before him.

So, literary credentials, plenty of opportunities for walks, the sea close at hand – what was not to like?

Well, one of those downsides of UK holidays is rather obviously the weather. In this case, our four full days in Rye saw two of soaring temperatures and azure skies, with the following two being almost entirely the opposite.

But on a break like this, that wasn’t too bad and more of what we did in later posts.

On our first full day, the Friday, we took a walk down one side of the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, ambling through sheep-dotted salt-marsh pastures all the way to Rye Harbour itself.

There, we took tea and magnificent homemade blackcurrant cake, still warm from the oven, in the delightful Avocet Gallery and Tea Room – but more of art in the area another time too.

Refreshed, we set off for Winchelsea Beach, aiming to be there for lunch. There are two routes: one, along what passes for the front, while the other appeared to pass through the reserve, alongside one of the bodies of water within it.

I say “appeared”, because we were relying on Google maps and were having to do a certain amount of guess work given the lack of information on footpaths.

We should have taken the lessons of Google maps in Bavaria in March, but hadn’t. So instead of proper maps, we were stuck with the computerised version again.

The Other Half plumped for the latter route, thinking that it would offer us more to see.

In the event, we discovered that the reserve is, in effect, split across the middle by an area of private land, which prevents you getting near any of those bodies of water.

By the time we realised this, it was too late to turn back. We were walking due west, with the sun pouring down on us straight from the south, with nothing to provide any shade.

Unaccustomed to British seaside stays in the summer as we are (Brighton or Bournemouth in June or February for work does not count), I had forgotten any sun screen.

We were dressed sensibly enough for walking, but by the end of the trip, one side of me was pretty much beetroot red.

However, although we were prevented from seeing the sea by a sizable ridge – a secondary part of the local sea defences – there was plenty more to catch the eye.

Is beans on toast really so difficult?

This included masses of common blue damselflies or azure damselflies, darting just above the gravel path, their vivid, electric colour

There were also brown hawker dragonflies – flitting far higher up, often very near you, and vast, at 7cm or just over.

Flowers abounded in the shingle and the scrub, bringing flashes of unexpected colour to catch the eye.

A battered boat, sitting next to a large tree, provided one wonderful photographic opportunity.

We saw hardly anyone and the few who did pass us exchanged greetings.

When we eventually reached the beach area, with it’s caravan parks, we were in need of lunch.

Those caravan parks – indeed, the beach – might suggest facilities. A simple eatery or two, perhaps. But that’s where the ‘worst-of’ stuff kicks in.

We ate a Mr Whippy simply to keep us going as we continued the hunt. And it was some time before we came across a single café at the far western end of one camp site.

By that stage, we would have been prepared to eat almost anything.

Now in such an environment, I do not remotely expect anything fancy. I don’t want haute cuisine. Pies and chips and the like are eminently acceptable.

But this is not an excuse for such dishes to be poor. They are not inherently poor food, but they need cooking properly, while decent ingredients are as important as elsewhere.

Frozen chips and cheapest-possible frozen scampi will not produce a feast. And nothing will ever be helped by a pile of grey-green tinned peas that are barely even warm.

After that, we trudged back eastwards to get a bus. When we eventually caught one, less than two miles from Rye itself, it cost £2.50 for a single fare. That’s £2.50 each, remember. For a single fare on a short journey. Perhaps London’s constantly-rising bus prices are not quite so bad after all.

In that, then, you have another reason that we head across the Channel for breaks: public transport. The Other Half can drive, but I never have. We don’t have a car. Neither of us has a licence.

Hake with popadom

In the UK, this means that you will: a) get shafted by the cost of public transport; b) discover that public transport is very limited in being able to deliver you to more remote rural spots.

The latter has been experienced on previous UK holidays, on Skye and in the Lake District, where we had to rely, respectively, on local taxies and the generosity of the co-owner of a B&B in order that we could do any decent walks.

That evening, after a rest at our B&B, we headed to The Ambrette, an up-market restaurant in the old town that came highly recommended.

It serves a fusion of local produce with Indian spicing. The menu was mouth-watering.

Unfortunately, what we were served was rather less so.

The spicing was far from subtle and dishes seemed essentially to be slightly deconstructed and poshly-plated curries.

For my starter, part of my pigeon breast was raw and the whole was pretty much covered in a rather sludgy, brown sauce, which was miles for being the hoped-for fragrant.

An afternoon scone  with Earl Grey in Rye – not bad

For a main, I had opted for the fish of the day. It turned out to be hake – and came covered in something that bore little obvious difference to whatever had smothered the pigeon, and a piece of popadom that had lost its crispness by being in contact with the sauce.

We decided to forego a dessert, although while we waited for the bill, we were each given a small glass of guava granita with vanilla sugar, which was light and refreshing and a delight, and left one regretting that that had not been a case with the rest of the food.

At this juncture, I want to mention the mystery of the toast.

Why, at breakfast in our B&B, did the menu say ‘beans on toast’ or ‘egg on toast’ when there was absolutely no ‘on’ to be had for love nor money?

To be fair, the tactic of giving you unbuttered toast alongside your beans or eggs for breckie had hit me in London, where my round-the-corner-from-work caff suddenly started doing this a couple of months ago, and where I now have to stress when ordering that, by ‘on’, I mean ‘on’.

And I’ve since heard that I am not the only one to have experienced this, which suggests it’s some sort of utterly stupid emerging trend. Well stop it. Just stop it. It’s stupid and annoying.

On Saturday, the same lunch issues persisted. We found Tambika, a small café that also sells fossils, for lunch. The Other Half had a vast bowl of piping hot leek and potato soup, while I had two large fishcakes and a salad.

To be fair, it was as good as lunches got, although the fishcakes were a bit sloppy, while the accompanying salad was bland to the point of lacking any discernible flavour.

Marino's fish and chips. Overrated

That evening, with hope in our hearts, we headed to Marino’s, which people universally acclaim as the best chippy in town.

If it is, then it doesn’t say much at all for the others.

There had been vast queues outside the take-away part on the Friday evening and we timed it well to get seats inside just 24 hours later.

Both of us ordered medium cod and chips, with mushy peas. And waited expectantly.

The mass of chips were clearly not hand cut. They were not the worst I’ve tasted, but they were a very long way from being the best. The batter on the fish was okay, but the fish inside it was dry. It didn’t flake properly and had the taste that you get from fish that has been frozen.

Nothing had been fried in proper fat. And by that, I mean dripping.

Fish and chips is not rocket science. But it requires decent ingredients and proper cooking. In dripping. Then it’s a joy – which is why I so fondly remember fish and chips eaten in Hull years ago and even in Scarborough in 2011.

On Sunday, after a very pleasant morning’s walk, we found ourselves in the same old predicament.

This time, we ended up at the Café on the Quay. Plus ça change. It’s chips with everything, as Arnold Wesker might have put it. Or everything with chips.

A cheese omelette this time – plastic, flavourless cheese, that is, and the usual British heavily-set egg concoction. With piles more mediocre frozen chips. And another insipid salad that a rabbit would turn its nose up at.

I was longing to go back to Rye Harbour, just for the Avocet. They don’t do cooked meals, but the mere suggestion of the simple crab salad mentioned on the menu was a serious lure for taste buds that were dying.


For goodness sake – Cromer is a mere four miles from Rye, and Cromer crab is famous, yet I saw it on offer nowhere other than the Avocet.

On Sunday evening, we struggled to find anywhere that had space, as the town seemed inexplicably full to its Elizabethan rafters.

Cod at the Mermaid. But those are not proper 'mushy' peas

At this point, we need to briefly nip back to Thursday evening, a few hours after we had arrived. Then, we had dined in the bar of the centuries-old Mermaid Hotel.

We’d had fish and chips: the beer-battered fish was to prove to be the best we had. The chips were far from sensational, but were also probably the best we were to have.

On Sunday then, we eventually wound up in the same place and, having scanned the bar menu, both opted for the local lamb.

When it arrived, it turned out to be a salad, with slices of rare meat atop a mound of pickled celeriac and carrot, and the freshest, crispest salad leaves you could imagine, with a dressing that was light but, at the same time, packed a flavour punch.

Finally, something wonderful

It was a thing of utter joy in every single way.

Afterwards, we booked at the hotel’s restaurant for our final evening – a meal that proved to offer local scallops for the first time, cooked superbly and served with equally-perfectly cooked broccoli and potato dice, followed by shoulder of lamb and veg.

Were that not enough to revive desperate taste buds, we finished with an utterly divine dessert of elderflower and champagne jelly, a stunning raspberry coulis, chocolate soil (here it worked) a small scoop of vanilla ice cream and a wafer-light sablé biscuit.

It had been a difficult menu to choose from, and I was thrilled to see dishes that included sorrel and nettles.

A divine dessert

So the trip ended with really good food. But it would be remiss of me not to mention our last lunch.

Monday was a rainy day on the south coast. As such, we caught a train and headed two stops west to Hastings.

After an initially disappointing start – including but not limited to walking through the hideous Priory Meadow shopping centre, with its blander-than-bland architecture that wouldn’t offend Prince Charles (whose mother opened it in 1997) and which was built over the Central Cricket Ground that had opened in 1864 and remained there until the 1989; and also took in the classic British tactic of putting a bloody big dual carriageway between along the promenade – we found our way to something with character and real interest in the old town.

Just embarrassing

But come lunch time, we were struggling once more. And, yet again, we ended up having to give in to something and chips.

On ordering scampi and chips, this is what was placed in front of me. Few words are needed. No peas; no salad; not even a solitary leaf of garnish.

Germany is not rated as having a great cuisine, but in March, in Bavaria, there was not a single day when we struggled to find cheap, simple and tasty food to sustain our walks.

There were many visitors in Rye last week who hailed from Germany, France, Scandinavia and the Netherlands.

I shudder to think what impressions they take away with them of our food.

And that picture should provide ample illustration of one of the major reasons why we do not take more holidays on this side of the Channel.

We love to go a wandering

The way ahead

After a day’s rest for the feet, further studious study of the weather forecast revealed that Thursday and Friday were set to see precipitation of one sort or another.

That meant one thing: if we were to undertake another proper walk, it would have to be on Wednesday.

Helpfully, The Other Half – who had spent weeks studying online maps for precisely such ends – had just such a walk planned. So off we went, having this time remembered to take bottles of water with us but, unfortunately, no Kendal Mint Cake. I should have taken a slab to Bavaria on principle.

Our destination was another small Alpine lake, the Alatsee, and the start of the walk took us through the park at the back of summer palace of the bishops of Augsburg before we crossed a small, wooden bridge and climbed gently upwards onto a wooded ridge.

Germans, as I’ve mentioned before, care passionately about forests – it’s an essential part of the national psyche. Woods are so central a part of German life that, when it was discovered, in the 1980s, that the woods were dying from pollution, there was a united commitment to doing something.

Woodland delicacy

That the country is now a major producer of renewable energy is, in part, a result of that – and also an indicator that green politics is not seen as overtly as ‘left’ in the way it is elsewhere, not least in the UK.

For British townies in particular, we have, in general, long lost that sense of connection with nature.

But in Germany, no town or city is far removed from a wood or forest in which to spend time.

And these are maintained and looked after with great dedication, as are the footpaths that wend through them.

My mental musical theme for the week – with the exception of a burst of Wagner when at Neuschwanstein – was The Happy Wanderer.

Mein Vater war ein Wandersmann, to give it its original German title, was originally penned by Florenz Friedrich Sigismund (1788-1857), while the tune we’re familiar with was composed after WWII by Friederich-Wilhelm Möller.

Wood – smelling beautiful

A 1953 performance of the piece by the Obernkirchen children’s choir at the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, broadcast on BBC radio, saw the song become an instant hit and staying in the singles chart (a top 12 at the time) for 26 non-consecutive weeks.

As we wandered through woodland, for a long while, with the sounds of the traffic of Füssen intermittently drifting upward to us, yet already in a different world, it drifted into my head again and even, quietly, from my lips: a song from childhood memory, suddenly taking on a new life.

Away from it all

We stopped to inspect tiny flowers alongside the path; to listen to the birds around us; to watch as a small deer sprung away through the trees, glancing back over its shoulder to check us out.

It wasn't a busy road

The process of maintaining the woods means that some trees are felled. Clearly there had been recent work done in this department, as we saw logs stacked neatly between pairs of standing trees.

Walking past one such stack – clearly very recently cut – the smell was astonishing. Forget those ghastly ‘air fresheners’ in cars and elsewhere: this is what trees smell of and it’s intoxicating.

Perfect for lunch

As we made our way, the road sounds drifted away entirely: the tranquillity was wonderful and eventually the tinkling of a beck made it’s way up to our ears.

Having discovered (the hard way) the result of the lack of contour lines on Google maps, we made a decision after some time to take a path down the side of the ridge to meet a road that then went on to the lake, rather than take what looked to be a harder path that would take us back up before coming down near the lake.

I say ‘road’, but I don’t recall a single vehicle passing us as we strolled along it, the metal points of our walking sticks now striking the tarmac surface.

Brilliant beer ....

The trees to our left eventually fell away, leaving us with views of Alpine pasture filling the space between the ridge we come along and the rather higher hill side opposite.

We made it to the lake for around 1pm – perfect, since the hotel there also has a restaurant and The Other Half had fully factored this into his plans.

With the temperature ludicrously mild, we sat outside the chalet-style building and ordered drinks while scanning the menu.

The beer was a caramel-coloured dunkel from the Aktienbrauerei – the oldest existing brewery in Kaufbeuren, first mentioned in 1308, a whopping 208 years before the Reinsheitsgebot – and was the best beer of the week, with an absolutely wonderful taste.

As we sipped, we could hear the sound of The Other Half’s schnitzel being beaten out in the nearby kitchen. Oh, this was going to be freshly cooked.

... and fabulous fodder

For myself, I had leapt at the opportunity to try spätzle for the first time. A sort of soft egg noodle from the south of Germany (and areas to the east), I knew it by legend alone.

It came as the bed on my (large) plate, dressed in melted butter and with a vast mound of gloriously crisp and wafer-thin fried onion rings atop a piece of absolutely superb beef that had been cooked to perfection: beautifully seared on the outside and melting to very pink the further in I got.

It was the perfect illustration of how good food doesn’t have to be haute cuisine. This was perfection.

Sated, we sat awhile, quietly taking in the view.

The Alatsee spread put in front of us, with a snow-capped

Austrian berg soaring beyond the wooded ridge that marked the border, and the wooded hills around the lake split in one place by a wedge of pasture.

The Alatsee

It was still largely iced over, although where the thaw had set in, the water was that rich malachite green again, and crystal clear at the edge, creating a perfect mirror to reflect its surroundings.

It’s apparently a meromictic lake – meaning that it has layers of water that do not mix, which in turn means that it can include within it radically different environments for organisms.

Snow ahead

Such bodies of water were only really named in the early 20th century. They may occur where the basin sides are unusually deep and steep compared to the lake’s surface, and where the lower layer of the water is highly saline and denser than the upper layers.

The Alatsee is 868m above sea level, with a surface area of 12 hectares and a maximum depth of 32.1m. There are such toxic organisms living in the lake that they’ve been blamed for a number of divers have died or disappeared in its waters.

And as if this were not enough, it’s one of the (many) spots that’s alleged to be hiding ‘Hitler’s gold’ – although Lake Toplitz in Austria beats it for plausibility, given that forged British banknotes were found by divers in chests, together with a printing press, in 1959.

You see – travel broadens the mind: or at least the knowledge base.

The Obersee

Eventually, we set off again. This time, the intention was to walk back along the valley floor on the opposite side, along the Faulenbach and passing the smaller Obersee and the positively diminutive Mittersee before reaching Füssen.

This route had been less exposed to the sun, meaning that snow several inches deep still lay in patches over the path. Those walking sticks were proving very handy.

There was evidence of winter tree fall from the steep, rocky ridge now to our right, and also where the local forestry management teams had come in and removed the section of a tree that had fallen across the path, leaving the rest where it lay.

Looking back from the Obsersee

Again, the sounds of trickling water and bird song were the dominant ones, leaving city natives to feel almost out of kilter at the absence of urban drone. It’s a long time since I spent so long away from the sounds of traffic.

The Obersee was almost completely iced over, with reeds rearing up to tell you that there was marshy land beneath the frozen white.

And so we continued toward the town; another satisfying walk under our belts – another day gazing at this extraordinary landscape and feeling awed by it. Happy wanderers indeed.