If you love excellent food, and you're interested in a unique experience in Passau, Germany, you can't do better than dinner at Marcel von Winckelmann. They are sure to be a Michelin star restaurant in the near future, so get in before it becomes impossible to get a reservation!
Arrive at 6:15 PM for a 6:30 PM dinner start. We were done about 11:30 PM, so plan on a relaxed evening. You will eat around a horseshoe table and get to see everything prepared directly in front of you.
You can choose from a 5 or 7 course set menu. For drinks you can choose between the wine-pairing or the non-alcoholic pairing. If you're two people, you might try one of each pairing and share. My group chose the 7-course set menu. I chose the non-alcoholic pairing, and the rest of the group chose the wine pairing. No one was disappointed! The non-alcoholic pairings were simply amazing, and the most interesting I have ever tasted. They were all made fresh by the sommelier. Think fresh juices and/or teas, marinated in spices. The wines were even more amazing. As someone from our group said, when you choose the wine pairing, you end up trying wines you would never have chosen yourself. That was definitely our experience. The sommelier described the last choice as liquid gold. An ice wine from the south of Austria...out of this world!
The food, if possible, is even more amazing. Each course was a work of art, beautiful to look at and wondrous to taste. Watching the preparation is like watching a modern dance. The entire team works so well together whether it was the chef, the sommelier, the prep cook, the trainee, or even the dishwasher, the performance was seamless.
The people are as friendly as the food is amazing. Marcel will chat with you between courses. If you're not fluent in German, the sommelier speaks excellent English, so make friends early. As usual, English speakers should speak slowly, enunciate, and enjoy sometimes not understanding everything. Food is after all, a universal language. read more