Speyer Restaurants

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Shopping and sightseeing definitely makes tired. So if you need to take a break, all the cafés and restaurants in Maximilianstrasse invite you to fill yourself up with energy.

My all time favourite for excellent cake is Café Schlosser, just 200 m west of Cathedral Plaza. It is not only a café but a patisserie, and the cakes they serve are freshly made, no “plastic” ingredients. Any kind of coffee is also very good (tasty Latte Macchiato), and they also provide a good selection of tea.

It is closed on Monday.

Favorite Dish: My red currant baiser cake was so yummy that I could hardly resist getting another one.
My colleagues has freshly made apple cake, and from their faces I could tell that they wanted it to be supplied to their hometown (which is Sao Paulo :-)

Cakes are around 2,30 €, coffee between 2 and 3 €.

Update Feb 2007:
also their version of lemon cheesecake is very much delicious ! (phot 3)

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Fish market (Fischmarkt) is a nice place a bit off the mainstreet for a relaxed beer or coffee during sightseeing. Kutscherhaus (would translate into coach/carriage house) is perfect for this. Not only does the house itself look gorgeous from spring on with all the wisteria growing, but they also provide nice wooden chairs and tables with parasols on the outside. I can only report about their latte macchiato, which is excellent. But I saw other people’s dishes and this all looked excellent. I have yet to try myself next time.

Their website is in German only, the dishes are average in price, from 4 € for soup to 7,50 € for salad and 10-20 € for the main dishes.

Favorite Dish: Directions:
Continue walking west from St. Magdalenen through Pistoreigasse and Holzmarkt to Fischmarkt or walk north from Maximilianstraße into Salzgasse, continue into St. Georgengasse, and there you are.

Opening hours:
daily 11:30-14:30 and from 18:00-23:00. Closed on Wednesdays.

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This restaurant is the proof that the best isn’t simply at the main streets :-). I am grateful to Ian and his partner Rosemarie (Iandsmith) who were staying in the Engel hotel when they were visiting Speyer early 2008. And when I came to spend some days with them, we wanted to have something to eat close by but they didn’t have space for us. This year in May I stayed in Speyer for 2 days with a young colleague, we’ve booked our rooms in the hotel and made sure that we booked a table early enough. What caught my attention was the Slow Food logo in its window (photo 5), as these days I just came back from Umbria and was completely captured by the Slow Food concept: heavenly dishes with local ingredients.
So I was anticipating heavenly experiences and I wasn’t disappointed. To start with: the restaurant is located in an old vaulted cellar (photo 4), with many little niches for a real cosy atmosphere. It is sparsely decorated and this adds to the atmosphere of a heavenly place.

Favorite Dish: The dishes: oh my… I need to come back soon. I had a season salad with wild herbs, a potato cakelet/fritter and ham as a starter (photo 3), delicious!! I tried to identify the wild herbs, and it was even dandelion inside, something I only knew in my childhood and it was good to see that this finds its way back onto our tables! As main course my colleague had the liver dumplings with wine sauerkraut (photo 2) and she was very much satisfied. I went for the Boef Stroganoff (main photo) with wild herbs and it was indeed heavenly. As we didn’t need to drive somewhere, we could try local red wine – very much delicious!! Their wine list is impressive, 11 pages with local wine of course and also wine from Australia, Chile, Spain, France, US and Italy.
The bill came to 50 € including espresso for both of us and a big bottle of water. That’s not too bad for two persons! The starters are all below 10 €, main dishes below 10 € for the Palatinate specials and 10-20 € for the ones with beef and fish and desserts are around 5 €.

Highly highly recommendable!

Directions:
From Altpörtel (the tower and the cathedral in your back) walk into the little street Mühlturmstrasse right hand side across the main street (Bahnhofstrasse). It is on your left after a couple of metres.
Coordinates on GoogleEarth:
49°19’03,52’’ N; 08°25’50,04’’ E

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I think the staff were somewhat overwhelmed by the arrival of 30+ VT-ers, although they had been forewarned.

So service was slow, and rather erratic. I felt sorry for the young waiter who was, I think, doing his very best to cope with a multitude of orders in a multitude of accents and broken/no German!

But the beer was fine and the food, when it arrived, equally acceptable. I have to admit that my daily special of 'mozzarella, tomato and egg baguette' (see photo) was rather different from what I had expected (VT-er toonsarah felt the same way)! but actually it was extremely tasty. Clearly they'd had to improvise, but at least their improvisation was good!

A nice place to have a snack, a drink and/or a rest, I think. Its outside tables are well-placed for watching Speyer go by (including random wedding arrivals and departures, as the Rathaus is almost next door).

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When it was time for lunch, Ingrid suggested the CAFE' SCHLOSSER, which was right on the main square.
As there was thirty of us, you can imagine that it took them a while to get to everybody. They did a fantastic job and everyone was happy.
Hans and I and Ove who was sitting with us, ordered Flammkuchen mit Speck und Zwiebeln ( with ham and a special cream sauce). It looked just like a pizza and tasted delicious. We all had lemonade to drink and Hans and I shared a beer.

Favorite Dish: Flammkuchen "Baked in the Flames" - is one of the specialties of the region. Thin bread dough is rolled in a circle, which is covered by a sauce of quark, sour cream and creme fraiche and then onions, bacon or ham is added to it. It is quite delicious and filling.

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I have never known a VT meeting that didn’t involve food and drink, and this one, while primarily a sightseeing tour, was no exception! On Ingrid’s recommendation we all headed for the Café Schlosser, where we could relax in the sun over a light lunch. It has to be said that the service was a little slow and haphazard (one reason we weren’t able to see as much of the city as we would have liked) but the food was delicious – and after all, they probably don’t get invaded by 30+ VT-ers every day ;)

Favorite Dish: I chose one of the day’s specials, which consisted of a small light omelette alongside a salad of tomato, mozzarella cheese and basil, dressed with pesto and balsamic vinegar. It was light and fresh-tasting – perfect for the warm weather. With this I drank a sparkling mineral water. I don’t remember exactly what I paid (too busy chatting perhaps?) but I think the dish itself was around €5, which is very reasonable.

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i took the apfelstrudel mit sahne
appelpie with cream about 3 euro i think
big glass fresh orange juice was about 6 euro so guess thats expensive.
think swanet had something like Johannisbeerkuchen am not sure.

open 9-18.00 think monday closed

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The owner of the restaurant are from Bohemia, so you can find here Bohemian and Palatianate dishes.

Favorite Dish: The "Pfälzer Teller" with Leberknödel (liver dumpling), Saumagen (stuffed pork's stomach) and Bratwurst gives you a bit of three typical Palatinate dishes. It goes along well with a Bohemian beer Budweiser/Budvar.