Restaurant Hoffgarten Charming restaurant with upscale cuisine

You never get tired of such a view. When you turn into Schloßstraße and walk towards Charlottenburg Palace, on a warm spring evening, you get that "like-God-in-France" feeling. On this evening, it would be more appropriate to say "like God in Germany", although that is a less common saying. It's off to Hoffgarten and thus to a restaurant that has devoted itself entirely to German cuisine.  

Chef and owner Christian Wemhoff has created a place with great attention to detail where you can indulge in the culinary delights of German cuisine. In addition, enchanting rooms in the picturesque Gründerzeit building, blue metro tiles and an old tiled floor that was once specially imported from a castle in France to be laid here.

From the colour scheme, which extends to the aforementioned blue metro tiles, to the logo designed by the owner himself, a reminiscence of Westphalian heraldry, whose insignia refers to the basics of the cuisine, the Hoffgarten surprises with heart and soul. Add to that a pinch of spontaneity and improvisational talent that these times need. That, too, is what gastronomy is all about: You have to celebrate the festivities as they fall! That's what we're doing tonight and we're starting the evening with a sparkling glass of Crémant from the Moselle.

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The "big menu", which is charmingly brought to the table and explained, includes four starters and just as many main courses, always with a choice between veggie, meat and fish. The small menu is complemented by two desserts (three guesses as to what is hidden behind a flamed cream) and cheese from Charlottenburg cheese enthusiast Fritz Blomeyer, who runs his specialist shop for German cheese just around the corner.

A small menu that misses absolutely nothing thanks to its focus on upscale German cuisine with a variety of basic products. Every now and then, something is deleted or added, so that the menu changes organically. Christian sources all the meat on his menu from farmer friends, many from his native Westphalia. So at Hoffgarten you also come across the tried and tested. The Iberico ham has the special feature that the Iberico pigs, which are actually native to Spain, are bred on a farm in Münster by an acquaintance of Christian.

While we eat away the wonderful sourdough bread baked on site with large air bubbles and incredibly fluffy butter, the Hoffgarten owner tells us that he is a follower of the Slowfood movement and therefore focuses on German cuisine. He doesn't need pineapples flown in from 3000 km away. "After all, we have orchard meadows here," says the sympathic host. 

The result is German cuisine with French finesse, a combination of tastes from childhood and youth. More than once we remember our grandmothers' cooking when tasting, for example, the wonderful beef tartare with lovage and mushrooms or the scalloped cream with strawberries and (of course) homemade raspberry ice cream. Everyone knows that's a huge compliment.

French sophistication is no accident: before the Hoffgarten opened last summer, the chef did an internship at Lamazére to see if gastro was actually still his cup of tea after 24 years in the event industry and as a large-scale caterer. It was. So he started looking for a place and found what he was looking for in the former Le Piaf in Schloßstraße. He has strong ties to this neighbourhood. He lives nearby, cultivating relationships with neighbouring shops like Don Camillo and A's Donkey.

Perhaps one reason why Hoffgarten already seems like a sworn part of the local gastronomy after one year, including seven months of lockdown. The service and the chef easily know how to entertain the beautiful terrace full of cordiality, weaving in an anecdote here and there and recommending a wine at the neighbouring table the next moment. It's not for nothing that Christian is known as the "walking wine list".

And so, before our fabulous main course, the surprisingly tender Duroc pork with green asparagus and a shallot cake, added by a wonderfully sloppy and firm-to-the-bite barley risotto with asparagus and shaved egg yolk, we unceremoniously enjoy a little wine tasting as Christian appears at our table with a small selection of suitable wines.

We decide on a glass of Sauvignon Blanc fumé from the barrique of the Sander winery. "This was one of the first wineries in Rheinhessen to convert to organic," Christian tells us. The gentleman is not only a host through and through, but also deeply convinced of his concept. And so, at a late hour, we make our way home, full and satisfied with wine, and we are already sure that this was definitely not our last visit. And behind us, the castle shines.

Ronja C. Kolls

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