Restaurant Halali, Munich

Friday August 26

One of Holt's i-podded guides recommended a place called Halali , which Barbara thought for a moment was Hebrew (Halacha?), but turns out to be a horn call signaling the end of a hunt - so game would be a theme.  The restaurant is on a quiet street near the Staatsbibliothek, and as we wandered there on our second stifling night in Munich, we had no idea that we were on the verge of one of the great meals of our lives.

The restaurant is impeccably linened and dark paneled, its high walls decorated with skulls and horns of deer and elk, with an occasional stuffed bird of prey.  There are bronze lantern holders figured with boar, deer, and hunters.  We were welcomed to sit near one ivied, multi-paned, and thankfully open window by a young blonde woman in casual street clothes, whom the website shows (in a pink dirndl) as Frau Egglhammer.  No one else appeared, but her service was easy, observant, and skillful, as if she lives here and is having a few friends (there was only one other table of diners) over for a simple, relaxed dinner. 

But dinner was not relaxed, and anything but simple - rigorously simplified is more like it.  We bless our fates that we chose the set menu for the evening, because once it started we didn't want it to end, and for a while it seemed like it wouldn't. 

The theme was summer specialties, including game, in modernized but traditionally German dishes.  We started with an amuse-gueule of summer vegetables en gelée with fresh basil, and a soft cheese ball rolled in what seemed to be savory kataifi pastry, with parmesan crisps, while tasting the wine, a 2008 Heiderer-Meyer pinot blanc "barrique," recommended as being especially good with game.  Frau Egglhammer held the bottle in the bar fridge, as any icebucket would have been ineffective on such a hot night; and she was careful to keep us topped up with sparkling water as well.

The Vorspeise, scattered with arugula and red lettuce, consisted of beef tartare and mushroom duxelles garnished with basil, a tidbit of moist smoked eel on a cabbage roll, and tranches of goose liver in bacon dotted with apricot, which liver-hater Holt said was the best-tasting of any he's ever had (the previous was aboard the Seabourn Pride).

The first course was house-made thin noodles in truffled cream sauce, just lavished with slices of woodsy summer truffles ("scorzone"), the only fresh truffle available at this season (a spotter's guide to truffles is at this site ).  We were just able to keep ourselves from standing on our heads to lick the bowls.  But the elegance did not let up, witness the palate cleanser: an intense basil sorbet, like a bright green fruit, with a bitter chocolate stem and mint leaf. 

There were two choices for main course, and as usual we had one of each and switched in the middle.  This was not without its dangers, because as Frau Egglhammer warned us, the plates were hot - and not the usual dishwasher hot, I mean scorching.  This was especially true of the grilled game-fish ("Edelfisch"), which was pink-white like fine trout, served on a bed of spinach, with lobster sauce and garnish of sweet scallops and shrimp.  The alternative was nicely gamy medallions of Austrian venison, served perfectly medium rare with juniper cream sauce, fresh porcini and chanterelles, red cabbage, spätzel, and a sprig of fresh red currants.  Surprisingly enough, the white wine was strong enough to stand up to these flavors, though we were not; we almost wilted in the heat after that, and had to be revived with more water and wine.

And dessert, of course; we were lucky that neither of us went for the cheese platter with truffle honey and grissini, because not since the silver dessert juggernaut of Philadelphia's Le Bec Fin have we seen such an array. We each got a large plate containing five desserts: a warm crepe with apricot filling; cinnamon crème brulée; a puff of coffee cream poked with a chocolate stick; raspberry foam in a round glass (hard to polish with your tongue, though we tried); and a knockout oval of sour cream gelato with fresh apricot.

By the time we finished, it was 11 PM, and we were the only ones in the place.  We asked Frau Egglhammer why, and she told us that on such a hot night, all the locals were outside in Biergartens.  If so, we can only be grateful that we had her, and the chef's, undivided attention, though we don't even know which of the two chefs (Hubert Buckl and Hans Reisinger) was in the kitchen that night.  We went out babbling that either or both was a genius, or geniuses.