Rosemary Goose

Two years ago, I presented Wieden Bräu with my “Goose of the Year” award, and I am still not completely sure why. Was it that “right goose at the right time moment” or were the other geese so mediocre that the Bräu won by pure arithmetic? Or was its goose really something special?

Looking back at my reviews and Excel sheets, it was a bit of all three, but the feature that impressed me most in 2023 was the presence of spinach in the dish. Nowhere else had I ever seen spinach served with Martinigansl, and the combination was surprisingly successful. Actually, as I was approaching Wieden Bräu today, I was looking forward to repeating my spinach experience.

I’ve got rosemary instead. This year, the restaurant’s cooks have, unfortunately, decided to play safe and use a much more common spice. The rosemary was present in the red cabbage, adding a pleasant flavor to its already enjoyable, tangy taste. It was also heavily present in the bread dumpling, resulting in one of the tastiest dumplings I have ever tried. The same dumpling was also soaked in oil, which made it very unhealthy but amazingly good. The dumpling with some good sauce could have easily stood as a dish by itself, a great complement to beer. (By the way, unlike some dishonest fakes that put “Bräu” in their names, this restaurant is a real brewery, with quality, but not particularly interesting beers.) The second dumpling, made out of potatoes, was deadly plain, sadly.

I wish the cooks’ creativity had been applied to the goose itself. Regrettably, the main part of the dish was average. Thoroughly cooked, the meat had no unpleasant fat bits, but was also somewhat on a dry side. Probably recognizing that, the restaurant served a separate jug with sauce, although there was already plenty of sauce on the plate itself. Bizarrely, pouring the sauce over the meat made the meat worse. The sauce had no particular taste by itself, but applied to the meat made the latter taste less meaty. The goose flavor was hardly recognizable afterwards – the bird could have been a duck, a turkey or even a chicken instead. Or perhaps even a fish, for the long, thin bones that Wieden Bräu’s Gansl was full of looked very fish-like.

Thus, the chances of Wieden Bräu’s winning again this year are very slim. They are zero, actually, because I have already eaten at least two portions of goose that were infinitely better. This is not to say that this brewery does not deserve a visit. Its inner garden is very cool and pleasant in summer, and the other dishes it serves look really good if you don’t mind eating unhealthily. And what is the point of eating healthily while downing a Krügerl after Krügerl of beer?