One of the perks of living in Europe (and especially Germany) is that traveling to another country is often very quick and painless. Some friends of ours, Daniel and Henny, live in Karlsruhe (about 1.5 hours from us) which is only about 20 minutes from Alsace. The last time they came to visit us, they told us all about a great little French restaurant they know of and we made sure to set a date to visit with them as soon as it started to get a bit warmer.

The restaurant is in a tiny little border town called Lauterbourg and if it hadn’t been for the abandoned toll & customs buildings we passed by, we might not have realized we’d left Germany. Granted many of the houses look different the second you get over the border…and all the signs are in French, but this particular town seemed more German than others. But they do have some incredible brick streets there.

Alsace restaurant Lauterbourg

The restaurant, Au Vieux Moulin Sarl (5A, rue de Moulin, Lauterbourg, Tel +33 388 94 60 29) is quaint and unobtrusive outside. And it was really unfortunate that the weather wasn’t better because we could have taken the dog and made use of their large outdoor seating area (across the street). But alas it was chilly and rainy, so we enjoyed our quiet corner booth inside instead.

Alsace restaurant Lauterbourg

Since we went for lunch at about noon, we were completely alone in there for a while which was nice. The restaurant filled up quite a bit as we sat and ate, but they seated everyone with distance to spare between us and it never got too loud or unpleasant to be in there. Even when Mack was completely full and didn’t want to sit in her high chair any more, she had plenty of space in front of our table to roam a bit without getting into trouble. And the people at the table next to us certainly seemed to enjoy watching her amuse herself.

Alsace restaurant Lauterbourg

There are two important reasons to go to Alsace: the wine and the food. We made sure to thoroughly enjoy both. Alsace is a very popular wine region of France and the vineyards are all centered around one 105 mile (170km) stretch of road that runs from Strassburg to Mullhouse. But because it runs right along the German border, there is quite a bit of German influence mixed with the French ways of living. We took a long road trip with the Defender to Alsace in October 2005 in case you missed it: Part 1 and Part 2. It was an absolutely fantastic weekend.

But back to 2010. The four of us shared a nice bottle of wine called Kaefferkopf and it’s a regional wine of Alsace that comes from Ammerschwihr. It’s one of the more popularly grown Alsace Grand Cru’s, found on 175 acres (71 hectares) and is the 51st Grand Cru of Alsace. Multiple vineyards work together to produce this wine and until recently, anyone could put the name Kaefferkopf on their wine if they had the right blend: 60% to 80% Gewurztraminer, 10% to 40% of Riesling, and a maximum of 30% of Pinot Gris. It’s a very nice wine and reminds me a bit of the Tocai we fell in love with in Italy. It could have been a bit colder but I’m sure that it would have been even more deadly for us if that had been the case. Because wines like these tend to have a very light flavor and they just go down like water.

The menu at Restaurant Au Vieux Moulin Sarl is huge and I assure you that it was not easy to decide what we would order. If we’d known they had everything on their website, we might have started narrowing our selection in advance. Everything sounded good! Thankfully, the next time we go back, I’m already pretty sure of a few things I will order that surprise even me: goose liver and frog’s legs.

Let me preface by saying that I am in no way a fan of liver, especially foie gras. But our friends ordered it as an appetizer and I’m always willing to try new things. They got the chef’s foie gras in particular, which is marinated in Gewürztraminer wine and accompanied by pieces of aspic made from Gewürztraminer (it’s another wine of the region). It was SO good. Really moist and a light, very pleasing flavor.

Sitting on the “not quite so brave” side of the table, I ordered half a flammküchen (a wafer thin, pizza that is traditional to the area) and Stefan had a mixed salad. He raved about how amazingly fresh all the ingredients were the rest of the day and the dressing was apparently also very wonderful. No idea what the green foam was but the strange looking leaf thing to the left was actually like a fried wonton with some sort of sharp spices on it…very tasty.

Alsace restaurant Lauterbourg

My flammküchen with ham & cream (the most common way) was pretty good but the bottom was burned ever so slightly and destroyed a bit of the immensely light flavor for me. But as you may notice, I did not take the time to photograph it and instead devoured it. Certainly not inedible; just not the best one I’ve ever had.

Then came the main course. There were so many options that I actually decided to go with their Alsace Menu which includes either onion soup, half a flammküchen or a mixed salad to start, your choice of one of the local specialties from the area and desert for €27. I selected Coq au Riesling (Chicken in Riesling sauce) and it was really good. Served with a really nice, thick cream gravy which was to die for, the chicken was really moist and the vegetables were perfectly al dente. It was way more food than I could eat and I felt like I should have taken the other half home in a doggie bag–but I wasn’t really sure if it was that kind of establishment and the waiter didn’t offer.

Lauterbourg Alsace restaurant

I think Stefan had some sort of veal and whatever it was, it was very good. And in case you’re wondering what is on top of the little mashed potato tower of these dishes, they were chopped black olives. Very strong flavor because they’d been marinated in something but not a bad flavor combination in the end.

And unfortunately I can’t remember what Henny ordered but I want to say some sort of beef? Veal sweetbreads perhaps? I honestly don’t know but I think it was something from the standard menu.

And of course, not to be forgotten: the frog legs. You can hardly even tell what they are but I promise you, they were heavenly. Very much like eating chicken wings, extremely tender meat and this particular recipe with cream sauce and lemon was really good. According to our friend, Daniel, who was eating these, they are the best frog legs he’s had near or far. I can’t say that I would ever just go somewhere and order them without getting a recommendation from someone, but I definitely can see myself ordering these when we go back here.

Because we really hadn’t had quite enough food, there was also dessert. Well, mine was included but Stefan and Henny also ordered something — Dan was pretty full after all the frog legs.

Stefan had a chocolate mousse which was insanely rich and SO good. Henny had a trio of sorbet and each flavor was better than the next: strawberry, mango and another I can’t remember–probably because I liked the first two so much! With the menu you got a choice of cake or ice cream and sorbet mixed with fresh fruit…I went with the latter since I was already really stuffed. Vanilla ice cream with lemon sorbet and fruit pieces — just the right size to fill my stomach up to full capacity.

All in all, it was a really nice time and wonderfully tasty. I hope that we are going back there sooner rather than later. Maybe we can fit in another trip some time this year still, even if I have no clue when that would be. But it’s not a bad  day trip from us and even though Mackenzie had to skip her nap for the day (she’s not such a big fan of sleeping in the car yet), she definitely seemed to enjoy herself too.

By the way, before we left, we had to go by the local supermarket, Carrefour to pick up some snail shells (long story.) Now if you’re a wine buff, you will probably appreciate this. The local Carrefour actually had its own wine room with higher end bottles of wine, separated from the long aisles of regular table wines priced 15 euros or less. The special wine room had wines that were 10 and 15 years old…and even an aged bottle of Cristal for the bargain price of €300. Most of the wines started at about €25 and they had wines in there by the case that you would rarely find available elsewhere as single bottles. Mind blowing. Although we didn’t go nuts with the expensive stuff, we did pick up two bottles of 1998 Chateau Pibran Pauillac Cru Bourgeois which we’re looking forward to trying. We didn’t really know anything about the vineyard but we do know that 1998 was a fantastic year for reds in the region and we read good things now about it online.