Adolph's Brauhaus, Cologne

This place - a humble Brauhaus and a bit out of the way (in Weidenpesch, just outside the Cologne city centre) - was a wonderful surprise find.

We were walking in search of dinner from my partner's flat and happy to try anything that looked comparatively smoke-free and half-ways appetising. This place exceded all my expectations.

A 'Brauhaus' is a brewery pub, and normally that means beer and plain (though mostly decent) food. Here, however, they also offered a very decent choice of wines and other drinks, and food that even on the menu looked unusually ambitious for a pub.

The one thing that immediately caught my eye was "Viennese Schnitzel (veal)". Now, in order for you to allow calling it "Viennese Schnitzel" it has to be veal, but they did well to make a special note of it, because otherwise you'd have assumed they were misnaming it - because real Viennese Schnitzel is really, really uncommon here. What you get in virtually all pubs is "Schnitzel, Viennese style", which then means a chunk of pork with a bread-crumb batter. I do like bread-crumb batters, but what makes Viennese Schnitzel so adorable is the fact that it's ultra-thin veal and a very fluffy (from proper frying, I think) batter. I had to try this one.

And wasn't disappointed. It was utterly delicious. My partner had steak with fried potato chunks, which was very good, too. The salad was the only thing that was less than great - typical pub-style, that is - and the fries (which I had with my schnitzel instead of the recommended potato salad) weren't perfect either, but very edible.

Now, a plate-sized schnitzel with fries is normally enough even for my appetite, but I had spied something on the dessert menu that had tickled my interest - Palatschinken.

This is an Austrian specialty (which, together with the proper Viennese Schnitzel made me suspect the chef was Austrian, which the waiter confirmed), one of their many egg-based delicacies, this time in form of a pancake or crêpe. (Palatschinken)
I'd heard much of them, but never tried any.

They came with an apricot or cherry filling - or both, and I opted for both.

At first I was a little shocked when I saw two large-ish pancakes on my plate. I'm not normally a great fan of pancakes. I eat them mostly because I like the idea of pancakes. I tend to find the texture unpleasant and the taste not sufficiently interesting to outweigh the unpleasantness of the texture - and that goes for any pancakes I occasionally make myself, too.
I never thought I'd be able to eat more than half of one of them.

However, I soon found that these were a different matter entirely! They were airy and fluffy and the more I ate, the more I wanted. I finished both of them easily and thought I shouldn't have minded some more.

The interior of the restaurant itself is simple but tasteful, with a bar area (with a TV, to show football games) and a generous dining area behind, TV-free, plus seating outdoors in a quiet street parallel to the main street on which the building is situated. Smoking, thankfully, is outdoors only.

Prices were nice, too - typically Brauhaus/pub, really.

The restaurant doesn't have a website of its own, so here's an entry for it in a pub-listing: http://www.gaffel.de/index.php?nc=82&firmaid=905