The Speckmakers

Location:Der Talwirt
Website:http://www.talwirt.com/
Address:See 30, 5612 Hüttschlag
Status:Open (last checked on 17 August 2019)
Eaten:"Almjause," small mixed salad, three beers (Zipfer)

There is a common fallacy that the things that are difficult to obtain are likely to be good. I must admit, I fell (and occasionally continue to fall) for that misconception, looking for Brettljausen at rather remote places. This is wrong, of course: a good Brettljause (or any other dish, for that matter) requires a straightforward supply of fresh ingredients, and this can be very difficult if the restaurant is in fact a small hut some 2,500 meters above the sea level with only a steep stony path providing the access.

This does not apply to the Talwirt. Although located at the very end of the Großarl valley, this place is easily reachable with a car or a bus and is famous for producing its own Speck. By “famous” I mean that they have a small shop of their own, and their produce is sold in Großarl, which is the closest “biggish” village.

One must give the cook credit: the Jause looked very good. Though the board itself was quite small, it was packed with expertly arranged ingredients: three types of Speck, two types of hard cheese and a bit of soft cheese, a cheese-filled salami and, weirdly, a smoked beef sausage, reminding me of Italian Bresaola.

For me, that sausage was the king of the Brettl. Of course, the Speck should have occupied the throne instead, but I made the mistake of putting the complete slices of it on top of the bread and then trying to bite off a piece. That failed miserably, ending up with my mouth full of hard-to-chew fat that detached itself from the meat all at once. A much better approach, as I realized far too late, would have been to cut the Speck into tiny slices and eat them with no butter or bread at all.

Unfortunately, the Speck and the “Bresaola” aside, the Brettljause was extremely supermarket-y. The cheeses did not taste of anything, and the salami tasted exactly like the stuff I can buy at Billa. The trouble of the Talwirt is that it tries hard to serve a good authentic Brettljause, yet lacks the ingredients to make it interesting. Honestly, I don’t know if there are any salami or cheese-producing farms nearby, but if there are, the Talwirt would do well to cooperate with them.

3.0

Brettljause
Variety
Authenticity
Size
Atmosphere/service
Value

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