German Food Tour in Düsseldorf – From Bakery to Pork Haxe!🇩🇪

We are in Düsseldorf and in this video we're going to take you on a full day of eating only traditional German food in this beautiful city. Let's go! Düsseldorf is Germany's 7th largest city, located just 30 minutes north of Cologne, right on the banks of the river Rhine. This region, known as the Rhineland, has a strong and proud food culture with its own identity. Today we are taking you on a real German food tour to try some of the most popular local spots and to find out, is authentic German food actually good? First stop, a classic German breakfast. Good morning, so we are in Düsseldorf and we came to a place called Henry's Café, which is right in the heart of the city, in the old town. And we're going to start with some German breakfast. We got a very standard German selection platter. It comes with some cheese, like Gouda cheese, Emmentaler, stuff like that. Some German salami, right here. Ham, some grey bread, Brötchen, like you said. Jam, of course, is very common. Also an egg, a hard-boiled egg we have right here, which we haven't cut yet. And then a little bit of decoration, like cucumber, tomato and lettuce. And this is a very common thing that you can get in a lot of German bakeries. Just a selection for breakfast, often comes with a coffee, I have a little espresso here. There was a lot of toppings compared to the amount of bread. That is not quite what my mom's generation would do, but I don't know, maybe we're supposed to. So there were some sweet things and some hearty things. For example, we got this classic German white bread roll here. There's butter on there and then we put some jam on. And I'm not sure, I think this might be raspberry. And then my favorite, which is not the most German cheese. Baby Camembert. Yeah, little Camemberts. To be honest, German doesn't have that many cheeses, so a lot of the cheeses we eat here are from the Netherlands or France, stuff like that. But I'm just going to maybe start with the cheese, the Camembert. Starting controversial in this video. Dude, I love it. I agree, a Camembert is kind of nice. And I got a little bit of a bite of jam in there. Kind of works together, funnily. We barely ever have sweet breakfast. But every time I have it, it's pretty nice to start the day out with something sweet, get the blood sugar a little bit up, right? So this is a very classic sight in Germany, the jam on butter on a white bread roll. But now for the hearty stuff. Let me just grab this one. This must look pretty bad to some people. It's just a grey German bread right here. And then we have butter on there and then the slice of salami. Salami is so standard in every household when I grew up. I think it's the pork version. This childhood, man. Grey bread, butter, salami. So common, man. So I'm going to try the bottom half of the bread roll. And this is kind of classic German breakfast. You have some type of meat slice, usually pork base. And then you have some type of cheese. But then you have little garnishes like tomato and cucumber as well. I don't know why Phil decided to make it half-half. For me, I would just layer it like ham and cheese together. That's not what we do. But that's not what the Germans do, I guess. I think I've learned to really like this breakfast. We don't eat breakfast very often. Whenever we're at Phil's mom's house or out and about on holiday, I do love it. It's very good. We have this nice ham and butter. I'm going to load it with an extra cheese. And then take our little egg here and just cut it up nicely. Oh, lots of salt. There we go. Nice little Stück there. Guten Appetit. This is my type of grey bread. Loaded. So this right here is supposed to be a breakfast just for one. And it's quite nice, actually. There were like six, seven slices of toppings on there, plus the egg. So you can easily order another bread roll or slices of bread or croissant with that. And it's also not uncommon that two people share this. Because, let's be honest, if you eat this all by yourself, it's a very big breakfast. I would have to go back to bed. And this is how you scoop out your espresso in Germany. Is that a thing? No. Good start to the day, but hold up. We're not quite done with bakeries yet. Before going to lunch, we had to stop at Hinkel, a legendary Düsseldorf spot, to grab two pastries for a little pre-lunch snack. And, yeah, locals pop into places like this all the time. It's just everyday life in Germany. You can get so many things at German bakeries. Obviously, fresh German bread is so good. A little pastry item, sweet and savory. And, of course, the Kuchen. We go to this one, I think, in every Düsseldorf video, at Hinkel. It's one of my favorites in the Altstadt and in the old town of the city. And I decided to go with sweet today. I went with a Quarkschnecke, which is quark, like it's this dairy produce in a snail shape. A little nice schnecke here. Yes, and I got a spinach stick, which is just like the savory thing. We already ripped it open and it looks very nice. There's lots of sesame seeds on there, too. I wish this was warm. It's not right now. But it looks very fancy for a pastry item. Smells so good. Oh, yeah. Wow, it has nice cherries in there, too. It's very moist and it's super sticky around it. Phil's just holding it so we can get a shot. It's just like, look at it shimmer in front of the light right there. So much glazing. So, how is it? That's really good. I think you'll like this, even though you don't like cherry that much. Every time we try something new, I normally go for the nice Nüssecke, but I decided to go with something different. Tastes like a dessert. Yeah, how is that one? Check out the spinach in there. It's real, actual spinach. Traditionally, all these pastry items there were just dough and maybe some seeds on top. But now you have all these variations that are filled with stuff and I really like that. Dude, this is really, really good. Dare I say like a 9.5 out of 10. I would get this again in a heartbeat. Does this count as Kaffee und Kuchen? Yeah, kind of. Without the coffee. Dang. The joy of a German food tour is going to a German bakery. Okay, enough with the pastries. It's officially lunchtime. Next up, the Karlsplatz, Düsseldorf's famous market square, full of food stalls and locals picking up their favorites. And since we are planning on going very meat-heavy in the evening, we went straight for a popular stand serving a legendary fish soup of the day. Alright, so for lunch we came to a different spot here in the city. This is called the Karlsplatz and it's a very popular lunch spot. I think they even close in the afternoon. And it's basically this open food market with international stalls but also German food. And since we're kind of on the water with the big river Rhine in the city, seafood is kind of popular as well here. And we came to this fish place and we got two different fish dishes. One of them, very common in Germany, is a Backfisch. You often get this in a bread roll as a Backfischbrötchen, but we got it on a plate with some potato salad on the side. And then there's Remoulade, which is like this herbal sauce in Germany. Very popular with fish items especially. And obviously fish is very popular in the northern parts of Germany because it's closer to the oceans. And further south you go, a little less popular but still very common German food. So what I'm very happy about is that they gave me two potato salad options. And if you know anything, I like a good potato salad. One was with mayonnaise, but I always love the ones with vinegar and bacon. Speck. Just gonna start with this, this is our lunch. Nice little fork full of potato salad. Dude, I like it. Vinegar and bacon, so much better. But let me cut this big-ass fish open. This looks so good. It's fried right there. Ooh, that's nice. It smells so good. Pretty big batter. Look at that. And then a little bit of the sauce on it. Perfect. My God, that's so much better than I thought. It's so soft. It like melts in your mouth. The fish itself is pretty chunky and the batter is chunky too, but both of them kind of melt in your mouth. So it's fairly oily, but it tastes like fish and very nice. I think the sauce, the Remoulade, what do you call it? It's a tartar sauce, some type of tartar sauce. Yeah, that goes so well with it. And we already squeezed lemon on there. I love a little bit of lemon on the battered fish. So yeah, I think this is a fairly traditional, pretty common lunch option. Just some battered fish anywhere in Germany. All right. Ich bin dran. And it's very cold today. But if you're coming to visit the city, especially Dusseldorf, you'll probably end up at the Karlsplatz. This one is the fish house and it's famous for fish, but specifically this fish soup. So this is the fish of the day and they sell it. They sell them the warm items until they sell out for the day. So we got a soup today. Look at how chunky this is. And I'm going to be honest, this looks way more seasoned than the average German soup. Oh, sorry. Pitbull. Okay. Stop. All right, so I'll just give it a try. Nice chunky thing. Yeah, it looks very seasoned, right? The orange. Dang, that's good. Wow. It kind of brings me back to like the northeast where there's a lot of like chowder and stuff and a lot of like seafood soups. Oh, we're in Boston. So it's really nice. So is that the German clam chowder or what? Yeah, it feels like it a little bit, right? Really? The fish soup option of Germany. Dude, these chunky things are just falling apart. There's a little bit of onions in there. I'm seeing some type of green, definitely some herbs. And I saw some clam or mussel too, right? Yeah, this is so good. This is a big chunky salmon piece right there. I think it has my name. Don't eat the whole thing. Half of it. Yeah, that's salmon. Oh, that's so good. It's so soft. It melts. That's the theme. Dude, I didn't know about this fish house place. You know how old people are like soup eaters? I think I'm getting there. We're getting there. I'm discovering more and more seafood in here. There was clams, now there's shrimp. Dang, there's huge. This is a good price. Oh, squid. I think this is a good price. For 20, 26. Yeah, I think so too. The portions are not huge, but you don't want huge portions for lunch usually. So I think it's very nice. A lot of the stalls in the square, the Karlsplatz, are in these containers like that. And we're sitting on these beer benches, very German too, right on the street. And we just noticed it's like 2 p.m. now. So for lunch hour, I think a lot of lunch rush is here. A lot of people come and eat. It was very busy at one. So if you don't like the busyness, maybe avoid these hours at the Karlsplatz. But then you risk of not getting soup if they run out. Maybe they run out of soup. All right. Lunch is done and the afternoon is here, which traditionally means you have to go on Germany's favorite side quest called Kaffee und Kuchen. So I'm on my way to our next spot. I just wanted to remind you, if you like food videos and traveling like we do, then maybe consider subscribing. And also a big shout out to our soulmate level Patreons, Laura and Jared, Roger Lübke, Robin, David Dagmar and Leslie Garnay. But now back to eating. Around 3 or 4 p.m., many locals take a break for coffee and cake. And we couldn't resist stopping at Heinemann, a Konditorei that's a real institution here in Düsseldorf to enjoy some coffee and cake the way locals do. And because it is like 3.30 p.m. or 4 p.m., one of the most common German things is Kaffee und Kuchen. It's oftentimes way too close and way too early after lunch. But it's a very traditional thing here in Germany. Kind of like the coffee after a big lunch thing. Like give it a little time and then coffee for digestion. But we got two pieces of cake. I got this nice looking creamy torte here. We call it a torte, not a kuchen actually. The creamier ones. And it's a lot of nougat layers, a little bit of doughy stuff. I don't know if it's marzipan or anything. To be honest, it just looked really good. And I already cut the front piece off. Now I'm having trouble getting it. But here we go. Oh, it's alcohol. That's always a nice surprise. If you look at it here, you really nicely see the layers. And then only the bottom layer is like a crunchy cookie. Very crunchy, very chocolatey. And then it's a very creamy layer, very light cake dough layer. And then more creamy stuff, some chocolate things on the top. And the fancy Konditorei, they always do this stuff. This is a little plate with their name on it, I think. Heinemann. It's so German to me. Every time I went to my grandma on Sundays, we had this type of cake. Very creamy, very common. And I decided to go with a raspberry kuchen. A Himbeerkuchen with Sahne. So with whipped cream on there. But let me just get... That piece is way too big. So there we go. A nice Stück. A nice Stück here. They only had raspberry. No strawberry cake. It's seasonal. It has the classic jello style on the top here, where the raspberry is. And I feel like that's a classic German cake. Not as much of the cakey thing that we're used to in the US. The raspberry ratio looks good. I'm ready for strawberry season, because that's my preferred fruit. But very nice. So we have the two opposites here. The fruity one and then the creamy one over here. But I love the fruity one as well. You need to get those on. Shove it in there. The fruity one is always so cold because of the jello around it. And I like that. It's very refreshing. I think the raspberry one here is better than this creamy one. I think so too. You were very surprised coming to Germany in the first place when you saw how creamy the cakes actually are. I think this one is better, but I think my favorite is the Herrentorte. That is my favorite cake here. It's more cakey, but this is not bad. I like this a lot too. The Kaffee und Kuchen at Heinemann. It was basically a crowd of, well, mostly older, very homogenous German locals. And then we joined the afternoon stroll through the city to build up our appetite for the main event. Dinner at Himmel und Erd. Where we are going big with a huge classic pork plate and the famous dish that gives the restaurant its funny name. Alright, for the main event and the evening thing, we came to a very German brewery. It's called Himmel und Erd, which means heaven and earth. But we got some very, very German dishes. So this right here is a German Haxe. It's a pork knuckle or a pork knee. I think it's the lower part of the pork leg. You have two bones in here. And it's just slow cooked and it's very crispy on the outside. It should be juicy and very yummy on the inside. It should come off the bone nicely. And you can choose a couple of different sides with it. And we chose the classics. The Kartoffelknödel, which is like a potato dumpling. And then the red cabbage, which is one of my favorites. And this one looks great. Yeah, that looks so good. So this Haxe here is like the dish that most of these breweries offer. And kind of like the heartiest thing that you can go with when it comes to German cuisine. We have this crispy batter on here. And then look at the bottom. You can see the meat there. Let me see if I can just... Oh, it's so crispy. There we go. Oh, I hear the crunch. Oh, my God. It's juicy. Oh, my God. Look at that. Look at that crispy pork skin. Oh, God. The bone just came out. Wow. This reminds me of America a little bit. The barbecue, man. Oh, my God. It's steaming. But did you see how easy that bite came off there? So soft. Very tender. It just falls off the bone. So on this side, which is the backside, we have all the soft meat. It just comes off. It's so nice and tender. I think this might be the best way you can prepare a pig, you know, pork meat. But what I really want to try is one of these pieces. The skin. Yeah, the skin. Oh, my God. Look at this. Crispy. I'm going to break this at the mic. Look at the fat right underneath it. Oh, my God. Let me dip it in some sauce here. Usually, I'm not a big fan of fatty meats, but it's so slow-cooked. It's just like rendered meat and then the crispy outside. It's like the typical pork belly thing. This is as good as German-style barbecue. I want to call it barbecue because it's the most common to like American barbecue, but it's just like good old brewery hearty stuff. So good. I'm going to try the sides. I'm a big fan of these potato dumplings. There's two different styles. This is the potato one. Get some of the red cabbage on there. With the sauce we drizzled on, some nice gravy. It melts in your mouth. These are so soft, but the star of this dish is definitely the meat. This thing is heavy, it's hearty, and just so good. And if you are into barbecue stuff like from America, you come to Germany, you have to try this. So, I decided to go with a regional dish, and I think this is one of the dishes that a lot of Germans even don't like, but it's Himmel und Erd, which means heaven and earth. So, apples are from the heaven, potatoes are from the earth. In Austria, they even call this like Erdapfel, like ground apple is what potatoes are called. But this dish comes with Blutwurst, so that's blood sausage. It's very popular in this Rhine area, so Cologne-Düsseldorf, where we are. And this is the best part, these fried onions here on top. It was kind of a polarizing thing for me when I first came to Germany because I didn't eat a lot of blood sausages growing up. I don't think anybody ate a lot of blood sausage. But it looks so interesting, and this one is very soft. We've tried different consistency of a blood sausage, but... On the inside, right? Yeah, it's super soft, and even the outside is pretty soft, but it's been definitely double fried. Like, this has been fried again, so... Put it in. Dude, flavor-wise, it's very good. I have to get over the thought that it's blood sausage. It's a little weird at first to think about, but taste-wise, so good. Like, it's so rich. It definitely has like nice fatty, chunky parts in there. The flavor is nicely seasoned. Yeah, look at that. Now to try some of the heaven and the earth. So, this is apple puree. And it looks like just apples kind of slow-cooked together. There's still decent chunks in there. It looks more saucy than anything else. And it's cold, right? Or is it warm? Room temperature. No, it's not cold or warm. I love applesauce, so I'm a fan of this. Here is the potato, so we have the earth right here. It's puree. Yeah, this is potato puree. I'll try it alone. Nicely seasoned here. But I think what you have to do with this dish is try it all together. Exactly, mix it up a bit. So we take some of the earth, we take some of the heaven, and we take a little chunk of the blood sausage. And this big, chunky bite is how you eat this. Mixed all together. It's probably the best bite. Taste-wise, it comes together so nicely. I think texture-wise, it needs the fried onions because everything else is relatively mushy. But flavor-wise, very good. And a more unique German dish. Maybe it's a good dish that you can eat if you don't have the best dentures. For older people and babies. I don't know how common this blood sausage is in Germany, but I feel like I've only eaten it less than 10 times in my life. And I lived here a long time. I've literally only eaten it for videos. Maybe if you're from the Rhine area. Where I'm from, we eat the sausage more like this, in slices. And then you put it on a bread roll. In Germany, you put everything on German bread. Privately, I would probably never order this, but this is so surprisingly good, I'm considering to do that in the future. I think the Hax is definitely the star. This is awesome.