You should visit the Hofbrauhaus in the Platz, if only to drink as good a glass of beer as one could wish to have. It is a fine and typical specimen of a German Bierhalle, very respectable and much frequented. After having had your first Schoppen (for having once tasted you invariably want more) you rinse out your glass at a handy fountain before presenting it to be refilled; but the person who takes your Schoppen along with several others in each hand, invariably with unerring instinct hands you back your same Schoppen. As an appetizer for the beer to which it is supposed to give an additional zest, they place a large radish about the size of an apple in a sort of turnip-cutting machine which ejects it in thin rings; it is then washed and put into a saucer with a little salt and water and eaten without any other accompaniment than the beer; it may be an acquired taste, but it appears to be very popular.
Nüremberg
Nüremberg being essentially a commercial and industrial town, it follows that expensive restaurants and high living are not one of the features of it. Yet the Bierkellers there are institutions that have existed since the time of Albert Dürer and his companions.
Among the best of these is the Rathhauskeller (or town-hall cellar), kept by Carl Giessing, a most picturesque place, as indeed is everything in Nüremberg; also the Fottinger in the Königstrasse and the Herrenkeller in the Theaterstrasse. At all of these good meals can be obtained at moderate prices, and hock is the best wine to order.
Perhaps the most interesting place in this storehouse of beautiful antiquities is the hostelry known as the Bratwurstglöcklein, or Little Bell of the Roast Sausage; here the specialities are excellent beer and the very best of diminutive sausages made fresh every day, also Sauerkraut. The bell is still suspended on the end wall by an ornamental, hammered iron bracket. Built about the year 1400, it is one of the most ancient, if not the oldest, refreshment house in the world, and has been used as such ever since. Here did the Meistersingers forgather, Hans Sachs, Peter Vischer, Albrecht Dürer, Wellebald Pirkheimer, Veit Stoss and other celebrated men in Nüremberg's history in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Great historical interest has always attached to this house, where the best class of entertainment is to be had. The present owners profess to have many of the original drinking-mugs, cans, etc., that these old customers habitually used and which were individually reserved for them. The proprietors of the Bratwurstglöcklein are so particular with regard to the character of their sausages that they are made twice a day. Consequently the sausage they give you in the evening has not even been made that morning; it dates its construction only from mid-day.
There is a doggerel rhyme written of the establishment that runs very much in the same strain in which I have translated it:—
Not many noble strangers
Can possibly refrain,
When once they've ate our sausages
From eating them again.
And it usually strikes them,
If they have not yet found it out,
That these sausages are splendid
When they're mixed with Sauerkraut.
The only thing they rail at,
When they fain would criticise,
Is to wish the little sausage
Were a little larger size.
At the principal hotels, such as the Grand, Strauss, Württemberger Hof, and Victoria, very good meals can be procured—the mid-day table-d'hôte prices varying from 3s. to 3s. 6d. Perhaps the best of these is the Victoria, which rejoices in a grill-room, and where the delicacies of the season are available.
There are American bars at the "American Bar," Karolinenstrasse, the Hôtel Strauss, same street, and at the Wittelsbacker Hof in the Pfaunenschmiedsgasse.
The cafés are the Bristol in the Josephs Platz, the Central in the Karolinenstrasse, the Habsburg and the Imperial both in the Königstrasse; but do not go to any of these under the idea that they represent the Café Anglais in Paris.