On Friday, July 10, the 27th edition of Frankfurt's great restaurant guide FRANKFURT GEHT AUS! will be published with a print run of 55,000 copies. Once again this year, the testers have put hundreds of Frankfurt restaurants to the test. Only the best restaurants are published in the magazine, clearly arranged in top lists for every occasion and budget. And of course, the editors have once again found some restaurants that you'd be better off giving a wide berth - be curious about "The Flops" of the year!
The App
Even on July 10, the new top lists and reviews will also be available to users of the FRANKFURT GEHT AUS! app. Those who already have the app only have to start it - the new issue will load automatically. If you don't have it yet, you can find it in Apple's App Store or in the Google Play Android Store. Note: Buyers of the new issue save over 70 percent on app purchases and pay only €1.59 instead of €4.99 when they use the coupon code in the issue.
The editorial highlights
Eating meatless every now and then is very trendy - but in a Michelin-starred restaurant? In Frankfurt, this is possible in several gourmet temples, with which the city's top chefs are breaking new ground, because the preparation of meatless dishes hardly plays a role in chef training. A purely vegan menu is therefore the product of months of research and trial and error. What difficulties the chef has to overcome and why a menu of vegetables and fruits has to cost nearly as much as one with beef fillet, Norway lobster and foie gras - these questions are answered in the cover story. Henriette Nebling has interviewed four of Frankfurt's top chefs who are involved in vegetarian and vegan gourmet cuisine and have thus initiated a green revolution in the city.
Autograph hunters beware! Frankfurt personalities such as presenter Bärbel Schäfer and singer Chima also like to eat out in the Main metropolis and reveal exclusively in FRANKFURT GEHT AUS! They reveal exclusively in FRANKFURT GEHT AUS! which are their favourite restaurants and which dishes are not to be missed.
In addition, the editors take a look behind the scenes of the Genussakademie and talk to the makers, and of course the most exciting event locations for private celebrations are not to be missed, and as always, the Frankfurt city events present their latest culinary tours. As a special bonus, all buyers of FRANKFURT GEHT AUS! will receive the new issue of GENUSS-MAGAZINS as a booklet in the magazine in the usual manner.
The Restaurants
Every Saturday, the new market in the courtyard in Sachsenhausen becomes a meeting place for urban epicures who line up here to grab a snack on the hand, and at Frankfurt's first big food truck festival at the Jahrhunderthalle, more than 15,000 visitors were already there on the launch date. We diagnose: Frankfurt is in the grip of street food fever and FRANKFURT GEHT AUS! is right at the forefront to introduce readers to the exciting new providers in this sector, who prove every day that fast food doesn't have to be unhealthy and greasy or involve mountains of rubbish, but can even be really sophisticated. Whether it's pastrami sandwich burgers of all varieties, hearty sandwich waffles or burritos & Co - to showcase the full breadth of this movement, readers will now find even more pizzerias, even more cafés, even more representatives of the snack & Weck category and also a brand new Top 5 featuring the best food trucks in town in the restaurant guide of their choice.
Those who still prefer to dine sitting down and also don't want to do without a white tablecloth will of course also find what they're looking for, because as always the complete spectrum of Frankfurt's gastronomic landscape is represented - from exclusive gourmet temples to exotic insider tips to bubbling scene bars that you can only find if you know exactly where to ring the bell. Every taste and every budget is taken into account in the various top lists.
By the way, FRANKFURT GEHT AUS! breaks its own record and presents over 300 restaurants for the first time - eating well has never been so easy! Of course, strict rules apply to the testers: All restaurants were tested anonymously, all bills paid by the testers themselves. The editors selected and rated the restaurants solely on the basis of their quality, and in the event of a flop, poor kitchen performance was confirmed by visits from several different testers on different days.
The question of who can claim the title of best chef in the city is particularly exciting every year. Connoisseurs may have already guessed it: After two-star chef Matthias Schmidt left Villa Merton, the competition is a neck-and-neck race between two chefs who work for the same company - Tiger & Palmen GmbH, which runs both the Lafleur in the Palmengarten and the Tigerpalast in the city centre. This year, Tiger & Palmen GmbH has again managed a real coup with the engagement of Christoph Rainer. The sympathetic cook, who cooked before in the mansion red shield two stars, stands now in the tiger restaurant at the stove and could convince at first go. Andreas Krolik, the master of the precise aroma balance, meanwhile moved from the Tigerpalast to the Lafleur restaurant in the Palmengarten, which is one of the most beautiful locations in the city and seems to inspire his work and creativity - with which he cooked himself a wafer-thin lead over Christoph Rainer and thus earned first place for the Lafleur. In 3rd place we again find an old acquaintance who sometimes has to listen to the accusation of not being quite as innovative as his competitors. But the classic French bistro cuisine has many merits and no one implements them as consistently and masterfully as Valery Mathis at the stove of Ernos Bistro. The tester even certifies him to be on the best way to become a new Fernand Point, one of the great star chefs of the last century.
On place 4 and 5, two colleagues are again competing: Both the Weinsinn on Fürstenbergerstraße and the new Gustav on Reuterweg are run by the Scheiber couple and both restaurants stand for modern bistronomic cuisine, i.e. no-frills enjoyment at reasonable prices. While Jochim Busch at Gustav revives the Nova-Regio cuisine in Frankfurt, which consistently relies on products from the region, André Rickert at Weinsinn draws from the full - and this year, with his plus of experience, decides the race in his favour.
In places 6 to 10: Restaurant Francais with Patrick Bittner, Restaurant Villa Merton, now under the aegis of André Großfeld, Seven Swans, where new chef Jan Hoffmann has very successfully followed in the footsteps of Kimberley Unser, Goldman with Thomas Haus, and last but not least Restaurant Emma Metzler - after a somewhat bumpy start last year, chef Hannes Ceglarz and his team have now definitely found their form.
The Flops
The testers of FRANKFURT GEHT AUS! have not only had good experiences this year, however. The worst of them - confirmed by multiple visits -, can be found as always on the flop list.
A flop as it stands in the book, for example, is the Asia Spezial Imbiss on Friedberger Landstraße. Anyone who doesn't flee in the face of dirt-encrusted floors and an indefinable fug in the air is punished with oily soup, cardboard-sweet curry and musty-tasting fried noodles.
Rightly shocked the testers were also by the conditions in iKoi on Hanauer Landstraße: In the guest room mountains of dirty dishes stand around in tubs, while the sushi partially without protective cover turns round after round on the conveyor belt. Those who have then placed their order via a grease-smeared tablet PC can look forward, for example, to trany salmon with bones.
The fall of Sushimoto - a restaurant that the editorial team recommended as one of the top Japanese restaurants of the year for almost 25 years - is particularly bitter. But those days are now over: Here, there are tattered menus and paper napkins like at a fast-food restaurant. When it comes to food, not everything is bad, but when it is, it's really bad: for example, mushy, tasteless grilled eggplant, old-tasting katsuobushi flakes, soggy eel, and salmon as a stringy piece of dry fish with lots of belly flap and silver skin on it. All at horrendous prices.
Testers also had no joy at La Tagliatella restaurant in the Skyline Plaza shopping center, which is decorated with lots of Italo kitsch. The carpaccio is completely tasteless except for the Parmesan on top, and the bread served with it is a puffed-up flatbread and as far from pizza bread as Frankfurt is from the Mediterranean.
An ice age has broken out at Eis Milano on Schweizer Straße: The unmotivated staff display an unfriendly casern tone and the cups are only made of plastic, but all this might still be bearable, had it not been for ice cream peppered with long frozen pieces and fruit juice in the yoghurt cup, which had apparently turned into the state of a Sauser due to the high temperatures and accordingly tingled on the tongue.
One is used to a lot from the gastronomy on the Zeil, but the Indian Kitchen at the Konstablerwache upsets even seasoned testers: Artificially tasting mint sauce is the flavour carrier for so many things here, including soggy pakoras and samosas with far too thick dough, which is at the same time too light and clearly too crispy. What the Chicken Vindaloo has to do with Indian cuisine is also not clear here - exotic spices and spiciness are sought in vain.
Chinese-Mongolian buffet at reasonable prices is offered at Shangrila in the Zoopassage. But overcooked, mushy vegetables in the spring roll, dry prawns in a greasy batter coating and sour soup in the plate? That's something you can do without. Just like the sushi - smells like dock, feels like gristle. Speaking of which, the Pakistani snack bar Rizwan da Dhaba is not afraid to serve its guests barely edible meat. It's accompanied by naan made from greasy bread baskets.
Last but not least, testers found that you don't even have to leave the house for bad food anymore. The delivery service Quickie brings it right to your door. Here, soggy fries meet parched, dark brown, grease-soaked meat, and overcooked rigatoni meets extremely creamy Gorgonzola sauce. But the "California" salad takes the cake, consisting mainly of white cabbage and pale iceberg lettuce. A few splashes of color are provided by sweaty tomato wedges and a (!) slice of cucumber. The duck served with it is cold and can hardly be speared with a fork, so rubbery is the consistency.
All in all, another well-rounded booklet for only €5.80, clearly arranged from A-Z, from top to flop for the next 12 months, guaranteeing a safe and, above all, enjoyable restaurant visit!
Photo: Pictured chefs from left to right:
Text from: Frankfurt geht aus
