Sampling Wine Pubs of Strasbourg Can Be an Enlightening Experience

I’d miscalculated how long it would take me to drive from Paris east to Strasbourg.

It’s only about 300 miles, but on the way I stopped to taste champagne in Reims. By the time I reached Strasbourg, negotiated the narrow, one-way streets and found my hotel, it was already after 10 p.m. At that hour in most places in France, you need good luck to find anything to eat other than a soggy croque monsieur . It could have been very grim.

Armed only with the address of a winstub (wine pub) near the cathedral, I hurried down empty cobblestone streets flanked with tall, half-timbered houses so old that their steep-pitched roofs had leaned into each other through the years. A glow of light that glimpsed through checked curtains told me I’d found S’Burjersteuewel.

At least that’s what the sign says, though most everyone calls it Chez Yvonne. When I opened the door, voices filtered out from behind a red velvet curtain.

Pulling it aside, we stepped into a brightly lit room filled with what seemed like all of Strasbourg--talking, laughing, eating and drinking. Waiters sailed by with platters of sausages and sauerkraut, and filled pitcher after pitcher with local white wine.

It was a little startling, like suddenly walking on stage from the darkened wings, but YvonneHaller took us firmly in hand and found us a place at one of the crowded tables.

We were wedged between an elegant older woman who was lustily digging into a pig’s knuckle, and a young couple attacking an overflowing plate of choucroute garnished with sausages, smoked pork and bacon.

Madame Haller was back soon, surveying her domain through white harlequin glasses. She delivered us some Gruyere salad in a mustardy vinaigrette, slabs of onion tart, boiled tongue with a puckery sauce and warm potato salad.

For dessert, she brought a sugar-dusted apple tart, plus a slice of tarte au fromage blanc , a subtly sweetened cheesecake with raspberry sauce.

For good company and inexpensive, delicious fare, Strasbourg’s winstubs can’t be beat. Clustered in the narrow streets around the gothic sandstone cathedral, they date to the last century, when producers from wine villages south of Strasbourg opened winstubs as a way to introduce their wines to city folk.

One winstub tradition is the stammtisch , a large table reserved for regulars who sit down and eat together every day. If you’re only a party of two, they’ll simply tuck you in with other people at a big table. And it turns out to be fun. It’s also a great way to decide what to order.

Christine Jenny, who owns the Strasbourg winstub Le Clou, describes the winstub as the melting pot of Alsatian life, since workers, businessmen, artists, students and society people all gather to mingle and eat.

Le Clou is really the Elaine’s of Strasbourg. The kitchen is open until 1 in the morning, thus it’s a favorite haunt of show business, theater and music people who come for the company and the good food.

You can order steak tartare or perfectly grilled lamb chops, but her backenoffe --the slow-simmered stew of veal, pork and beef, with pigs’ feet and potatoes--is one of the best in town. Also good bets: the choucroute cooked in Riesling and the wine maker’s tourte, a savory meat and mushroom pie made at harvest time.

Two blocks away at San Sepulchre, the proprietor greets you with a towel slung over his shoulder, squeezes you in at a table and then rushes off to the kitchen, where his 75-year-old mother mans the stoves.

This cozy, rustic winstub looks as if time stopped when it opened in 1936. And the stammtisch , where a dozen old men meet every day before lunch, has been going just as long. Representatives from the European Council rub elbows with stout matrons and young girls on a shopping spree, and the postman stopping in for a nip.

Monsieur Lauch dashes back and forth, joking with customers while he carves a ham on the bone--which is exactly what to order here. Cooked very slowly in bread dough, it is pale, moist and delicious, an entirely superlative ham served with mustard, cornichons and horseradish.

At the foot of Le Pont Couvert, the medieval covered bridge in the section of old Strasbourg known as La Petite France, is an informal bierstub (which also serves wine) called L’Ami Schutz, where you can feast on traditional Alsatian fare while Judy Kael sings Edith Piaf songs.

Specialties include l’esiigbroda , beef marinated and cooked in vinegar and served with spatzle noodles; saupfeffer, pork marinated in peppers, and coq au Riesling , chicken cooked in Riesling. In the fall there are all sorts of game from the Vosges Mountains; the chef’s father is a hunter.

Along the wine road that runs from Marlenheim, just a few miles west of Strasbourg, between the Vosges and the Ill River south to Thann, there are several country-stryle winstubs .

Wistub du Sommelier ( wistub is the local spelling of winstub ) in Bergheim features sophisticated home cooking and a list of wines to rival a two- or three-star restaurant. Owner Jean-Marie Stoeckel is a former best sommelier of France who offers half a dozen wines by the glass.

Get set for foie gras in an old Gewurztraminer, a superlative choucroute garni , cinnamon-scented boudin noir with pickled turnips and house-smoked pork. Or an autumn salad of bitter greens, apples, mushrooms, duck gizzards and grapes. He’ll also sell wine from his list to take out for a picnic.

Zum Pfifferhuss in nearby Ribeauville is a favorite with local chefs and wine makers. It’s very informal, usually packed with people, and features dishes such as choucroute salad with poultry gizzards, smoked pork filet in a pastry crust, and blood sausage with apples. You can also taste a range of eaux de vie (brandy) from the master distiller Jean-Paul Mette, whose artisanal distillery is just around the corner.

Winstub Arnold in Itterswiller is covered with cascades of red and pink geraniums. Tuck in your napkin and dig into slabs of their own goose foie gras served with warm toast ( pain de mie ) in a quilted box; salade Alsacienne (grated Gruyere with onion, cervelas sausage and head cheese in a mustardy vinaigrette); thick noisettes of venison with wild mushrooms and squiggly spaetzle noodles, or wild boar cooked in a blood-thickened red wine sauce.

Bouquets of wildflowers grace the table. Vino 1756 Veritas is carved on the massive beam over the doorway.

Life is sweet in Alsace.