Bel Etage is the one Michelin Star restaurant on the second floor of the Der Teufelhof Hotel. It is made up of several rooms of well spaced tables covered with ecru cloths and coordinating striped napkins. Windows to the street were in the room which had a lovely old wood floor and crystal chandeliers. No music is in the background and the rooms are mostly quiet except for the creaking of the old floors. Lots of art adorns the walls. Service was not polished but mostly friendly and English was limited. They never re-offered the bread tray and didn’t pick up some dropped flatware that was on the floor. They offered 3 different tasting menus as well as an a la carte menu. Wine pairings are available as well a a liquor of the month. We thought the smallest tasting sounded best and so chose it and our own bottle of wine.
We started with a Negroni cocktail. An amuse bouche of chestnut soup was delicious with bits of chestnut in it giving extra texture. The flavor was great.
Bread service was a selection of baguette slices , pretzel roll, seedy rolls, and dark slices. They came with both salted butter and herbed cream cheese, which was quite herby. The bread slices were nicely soft but very small.
A second amuse was tuna and avocado cream. It was okay but not spectacular. The avocado did not have much taste and the tuna was nicely rare but needed a spark.
The tasting started with Hungarian goose liver tiramisu with fig, hazelnuts and spicy bread. It was a plate of mild flavors and light textures, except for the nuts. The spice bread did have some spice flavor and the figs were really sweet and soft – they made me think of jam. The hazelnuts helped but it was mostly a surprisingly dull course.
Luma pork saddle on a Gölles Essig-Fourme d’Ambert sauce with roasted potato gratin and beans was the main plate. The pork was topped with a blue cheese sauce and the green beans were set on a white bean purée. Here the actual plate got most of my attention because the curvature of it made the utensils constantly slide into the food when you rested them on the edge. The darker meat of the pork was moist enough but the sauce was on the salty side (probably due to not adjusting for the saltiness of blue cheese). The potato gratin was quite good with a nice crisp to the exterior but it would have been better if you could have tasted the butter. The green beans were cooked nicely and had good flavor but the white bean paste was just so-so.
Dessert was apple variation with fresh goat cream cheese and goat cheese ice cream. There was a slice of apple cake and some tasteless panna cotta also on the plate. The cake was loaded with good apples. A tasty slice of dried apple was a garnish as were some unneeded leaves. The cake was good with the ice cream and in my opinion you could have left off all the other stuff.
The menu said you finished with Pralines but I’d call them bonbons. They were dark chocolate that was strongly flavored, lighter chocolate with nuts that were sweet and creamy and passion fruit covered in white chocolate that was fruity. These were simple and great with solid flavor, a good crisp exterior and gooey insides.
