Offenbach – A Diamond In The Rough

Venture far from Sachsenhausen or Süd-Frankfurt, or a short stop on your way to Hanau (for whatever reason that may be), you will find the small city of Offenbach. One can say it’s one of those towns or cities that most resembles the new Germany, pluralistic, cosmopolitan and apparently an up-and-coming place. Our daughter lives here and has re-acclimated herself to the bigger city life, than she was used to when she lived in Kassel.

Marktplatz

Though we have no photographs, mostly due to a certain ambivalence on my part, one can say this is where the action is. It has many modern stores, a main pedestrian zone for shopping and several trendy, economical and interesting places to eat. There is a U-Bahn stop here, which can be easily reached from Frankfurt’s Hauptbahnhof or main train station.

Other Areas

Around Offenbach’s Marktplatz, are many different areas for business and residential with the train station for the city slicing right through it. Though we use the Offenbacher Hauptbahnhof regularly, we have never considered looking for a place to eat near it. We were surprised to find a culinary gem not too far away!

ShauMAHL Restaurant

On a chilly, rainy evening with reservations for the Frankfurter Botschaft, we started our restaurant adventure on the Offenbacher Hauptbahnhof platform waiting for a DB train that would never arrive (perhaps another DB störung, they are famous for them as one of our previous blog articles describes; more on this in a later blog entry.)

Dismayed, we quickly canceled our current reservation and began a search for something comparable in the immediate area. We found ShauMAHL.

One would say a rather expensive restaurant. However, as the saying goes (and we are technically on vacation, even though retired ?), “in for a penny, in for a pound!”

They offer a fixed-priced menu which provides a very round selection, from fish, fowl to meat.

I selected the rabbit dish with green sauce which was excellent. Rabbit, rabbit meatballs, barley, ummmm, good.

For drink, I selected a nice regionally (Württemberg) produced red, Graf von Neipperg, merlot, 2015 (€79), very nice (I think I used the word ‘okay’ while trying it, much to the dismay of the waitress.) It has all the qualities of being a really good wine. But lest I go into wine snobbery, my bar (bar as in a high-jump bar, a bar to get over) is a 1986 or 1989 Chateau Lynch Bages, need I say more?

For dessert we chose whatever we were more inclined to eat, Erick the Apfelstrüdel, Patti and Ericka the ice cream and Tristan a coffee. Erick and Ericka still ordered an expresso with Sambuca straight-up.

For a rainy evening, an expensive (€410), though extraordinary find for a dismissed place like Offenbach.

4.8 Stars ??