Dresden Restaurants

From: Dresden, Germany

ABOVE: At the Restaurant Dresden 1900, small groups can dine in a vintage tram. INSET BELOW: The Café Alte Meister, where the plum cake is superb.

Restaurants and cafés

Hearty, down-to-earth Saxon cuisine is a mainstay of many Dresden restaurants. It's heavy on meat, dumplings, and other accompaniments that may have you reaching for an extra Lipitor, but why quibble when you're on vacation? Take another portion, wash it down with Radeburger Pilsner or a Krušovice Cerne dark beer from across the border in the Czech Republic, and order a slice of the local Eierschecke (a custard-topped cheesecake) for dessert.

Mind you, Dresden does have other dining options, from Asian to Tex-Mex. The tourist office's Restaurants in Dresden database had 117 listings when I last checked, complete with descriptions, photos, and a reservations e-form.

Some of the restaurants that I've sampled personally include:

• The dining room of the Steinberger Hotel de Saxe (good food, pleasant modern hotel atmosphere);

• Dresden 1900 (vintage theme, with an antique streetcar in the middle of the dining room, music in the late evening, a choice of modern dishes or "Grandma's recipes" from old Saxony, and a uniformed tram conductor for atmosphere)

• The delightful Café Alte Meister on Theaterplatz (a classic Dresden establishment that serves lunch, dinner, and drinks or coffee and cake between meals);

• Pulvertum an der Frauenkirche (Saxon food and drink, including suckling pig, in a cheerful if slightly corny atmosphere. Ask for the Last Meal if you're expecting to be shot or hanged at dawn.)

If you're visiting Dresden in nice weather, don't miss the Carolaschlösschen, or Little Carola Palace, in the Grosse Garten (Dresden's large city park). During the summer, you can eat or drink at a table by the lake, and the Monday-Friday lunch buffet is popular year-round. (I suggest taking the Dresden Park Railway to the Carolaschlösschen, just for fun. You can catch a train at a number of points in the park, including a station across the street from Volkswagen's Transparent Factory at the edge of the city center.

Going-away goodies

The Dresden Airport shops include a branch of the Heberer Wiener Feinbäcker chain where you can load up on topnotch German breads before your departure.

I can personally recommend the bakery's "Teff-Brot" Dreikornbrot , a coarse-textured three-grain bread that travels well and makes a great gift or edible trip souvenir. (Heberer also has several other branches in Dresden, including Schlossstrasse in the Altstadt and Prager Strasse north of the railroad station.)

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