In our post on Restaurant Bareiss, we provided a brief background on the two gourmet restaurants and five star hotels in Baiersbronn Germany. We ate a great meal at Bareiss, but stayed at the Hotel Traube Tonbach, which served as the base for our mini-gastronomic vacation. The village covers over 73 square miles and contains over 500km of hiking trails, one of the highest concentration of trails in a European city. We spent our days hiking, our late afternoons relaxing poolside in the spa and our evenings drinking and eating. We were captive in the Hotel Traube Tonbach and didn’t mind it all since everything we could possibly want was available at the hotel.

Hiking in the Black Forest is very interesting. Since it was lightly rainy one day, we only hiked about 3 miles; but on the sunny day, we were able to hike 10 miles to a mountain lake and back (having to trudge through a little bit of mud along the way). There is a lot of active logging going on within the hiking trails, so we just made sure to step aside when the lumberjack trucks came barreling by. Hiking is relatively easy with a steep uphill climb in the beginning and then a ridge hike for most of the way. The view of the village (and the hotel in the foreground) at the beginning of the hike is spectacular:

There are a few gourmet huts along the way that serve excellent food and drink for the hikers. This Blockhuette is run by the Hotel Traube Tonback and is located about 1.5km up the trail. The deck was a great place to relax with a drink on the sunny day:

We stopped by the Blockhuette post-hike to reward ourselves with a glass of wine or beer:

The inside of the hut was charmingly decorated with antlers. Their menu also looked very good, but unfortunately we were never hungry enough to order any food:

Hotel Traube Tonbach was originally founded in 1789, when baker Tobias Finkbeiner served food and drinks to lumberjacks who couldn’t resist the smell of fresh-baked goods. It became the first inn where tourism to the Black Forest really took off in the 1950s. Still owned by the Finkbeier family, it is a truly luxurious hotel. We didn’t have an opportunity to eat at Schwartswaldstube, their 3-Star Michelin restaurant, but they do have two other restaurants to dine at: Bauernstube and Köhlerstube, which share a kitchen that is helmed by Head Chef Florian Stolte.

The seven-table Bauernstube is the original inn where Tobias Finkbeier served the lumberjacks. Featuring a menu of local Schwabian specialties under a menu titled “Grandmother’s Recipes,” the fare is more rustic than that at Köhlerstube, but it turns out food from either restaurant could be ordered here.

As we perused the menu, they brought a wooden board containing an amuse bouche of vegetable crudites with avocado and lard dips. Delicious mini Flammenküche (onion and lardon pies) were also provided:

We ordered the Spring Garlic soup which was creamy and rich. The tiny croutons added some crunch and flavor to the tasty soup:

From Köhlerstube’s asparagus menu, we had ordered the Spargel “Polish” but what came instead was the Veloutè of white asparagus poured tableside over Büsumer Krabben (tiny North Sea shrimp). The switch was not a problem at all as the soup was excellent:

We enjoyed the Pinot Noir from Dr. Heger that we had at Restaurant Bareiss, so we ordered the 2004 version here which turned out to be equally enjoyable:

We ordered the Calf’s tripe with root vegetables made in a red wine sauce. We are so used to the Italian version of this offal dish stewed with tomatoes, but this red wine version is just as tasty:

The tripe dish came with fried new potatoes which were really excellent:

We also ordered the grilled filet of suckling pig from the Köhlerstube menu. Flavored with pepper and tarragon, the tender pork filets were served with jus made with shallot and served with mashed potatoes and carrots:

We had no room for dessert since all of the food was really filling. We did end up at the bar having some post-dinner cocktails which we will cover in the next post.

http://www.traube-tonbach.de/en/blockhuette
http://www.traube-tonbach.de/en/bauernstube-restaurant

Related Posts
3-Star Perfection at Restaurant Bareiss (May 21, 2013)

Note: The BarFlys are vacationing in Germany. SF posts will return soon; in the meantime, please enjoy these travel-related posts.