Teutonic Plates

I have plenty of friends thrilled to be invited to French, Italian, California or Mediterranean restaurants at the drop of a hat. But mention German food, and suddenly they’re all on a diet, looking forward to staying home and eating yogurt or steamed fish. What is it about German food that sends otherwise adventurous gourmands running?

I think that most people probably recall the inexpensive hofbraus that sustained them as penurious students with appetites much bigger than their pocketbooks. But those places have as little to do with real German cuisine as red-sauce restaurants in Little Italy have to do with the traditional cuisines of Piedmont or Tuscany. And though country restaurants in Germany do tend to serve trencherman portions of smoked meats, sausages, sauerbraten and vinegary potato salad, that kind of food is hard to resist when the products are top-notch. The lighter side of German fare is the sophisticated contemporary cooking of the country’s Michelin-starred chefs who have brought German food up to date by riffing on regional dishes and inventing their own. Two of L.A.’s better-known chefs, in fact--Joachim Splichal and Hans Rockenwagner--happen to be German.

The menu at Southern California’s premier German restaurant, Knoll’s Black Forest Inn, however, is much more traditional. This is the place for handcrafted sausages, warm potato salad in a dressing spiked with vinegar and mustard, venison with lingonberries, roast goose, homemade sauerkraut and noodles--cold-weather food.

Black Forest Inn has been owned and run by the Knoll family since 1960. Norbert Knoll is the chef, his wife, Hildegard, runs the dining room, and their son, Ronald, concentrates on the wine list. Behind the half-timbered facade, the restaurant’s vaguely Teutonic decor features a massive wooden bar and the requisite stags’ heads. The dining room, with pastel brocade-covered booths, coach lamps and artificial houseplants, looks as if it hasn’t been touched since the ‘70s. But just outside the rear doors is a pretty beer garden strung with lights that’s especially lovely on summer nights. The crowd is a faithful one, made up of regulars who have been coming here for years, if not decades, and German expatriates and tourists looking for a taste of home.

The menu is dauntingly large. On three visits with four or five guests in tow each time, I never come close to eating my way through it. But it’s simply not possible to cook this many dishes well, so the menu, like the kitchen, has its ups and downs. The three soups I try, including a hearty lentil, are all excellent. One night the special goulash soup of small nuggets of beef in a broth stained a deep red-orange with paprika outshines the main-course goulash, which is not as richly spiced. I like the liver dumpling soup, too--the dumpling resembles a slice of tender, deliciously livery-tasting meatloaf.

The regional appetizer sampler gives you a pale, finely textured Nurnberger bratwurst with sauerkraut, a taste of Swabian potato salad sharp with mustard and one of the house specialties, a hand-pleated dumpling stuffed with minced meat and spinach. Smoked salmon is a generous plate of thinly sliced, house-cured salmon strewn with capers and mild white onion, accompanied by toast and a dill sauce. Nicely browned potato pancakes are a bit gluey but make an appealing enough appetizer heaped with sour cream and golden caviar eggs. I can’t say I care much for the very sweet and vinegary herring filets drowned in sour cream. Or the odd salad of those meat- and spinach-stuffed dumplings, sliced cold and scattered over a plate of greens. The latter tastes like a German version of tortellini salad and is just as dated.

With main courses, stay away from the fancier continental dishes in favor of more rustic fare found in the menu’s regional specialties section. The chef gets his sausages from two local butchers and offers plates of the various types. My favorite is the Nurnberger bratwurst (a delicate veal sausage) with mild winesauerkraut and potatoes or the more robust German-style bratwurst with fresh red cabbage and applesauce. There’s also a generous

Wurstplatte, or sausage sampler. The “Black Forest Plate” adds smoked pork loin and spaetzle. I’m equally fond of the excellent smoked pork loin and the Eisbein, boiled pig’s knuckle, with more of that seductive sauerkraut. The schnitzel is a little heavy, though.

In winter, it’s worth investigating the game dishes. Venison, especially, is very good. The thick, tender, distinctly gamy medallions are served with a ring of baked apple on top and a tart-sweet lingonberry conserve. There’s a fine roast goose offered around the holidays, which you won’t find at many other places in L.A. Beautifully browned, tender and succulent at the bone, it’s served with braised red cabbage and skinny strands of spaetzle.

The sauerbraten is hardly sauer, or vinegary, at all. Thickly sliced, the beef is rather chewy, and the gravy is thickened more than most these days, pointing out how traditional and, in some ways, old-fashioned this German food is. Sauerbraten comes, like many of the main courses, with a couple of those crusty potato pancakes, slightly sweet braised red cabbage and chunky homemade applesauce.

Beer goes very well with this food, and you get a choice of eight German beers on draught, including Warsteiner, Spten, Erdinger and Paulener. Pale Weissbier, or wheat beer, is served in a flared glass almost a foot tall. There’s also an amber Oktoberfest ale and a heavier dark ale with the sweet edge of molasses. Wine lovers will gravitate to the wine list because nowhere else in L.A. can you find such a large selection not only from Germany’s little-known and underappreciated top estates in the Mosel, the Rhinegau and the Pfalz, but also from Austria and California. One night we drink the superb 1988 Egon Muller Riesling Scharzhofberger Sptlese, the restaurant’s last bottle and a great find at $45.

Unfortunately, I can’t recommend any desserts. They come from a local bakery and are mostly tall, excruciatingly sweet cakes layered with flavored mousses and sugary butter creams. Even the Black Forest cake--dark chocolate layered with cherries--is cloying, and the warm apple strudel is more soggy than crisp. If you insist on something sweet, order a half-bottle of Beerenauslese or Trockenbeerenauslese Gewurztraminer.

And when you finally, reluctantly, get up from the table, Hildegard Knoll will be right there at the door with husband Norbert to thank you for coming and to wish you good night, just as they have for 39 years.

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Knoll’s Black Forest Inn

CUISINE: German. AMBIENCE: Typical German decor with stags’ heads and an outdoor beer garden and half-timbered facade. BEST DISHES: Goulash soup, liver dumpling soup, smoked salmon, grilled Nurnberger sausage, roast goose, smoked pork loin, venison with lingonberries. WINE PICKS: 1996 Lingenfelder Riesling Sptlese, Pfalz; 1995 Fritz Hirtzberger Riesling Spitzer Steinterrassen Federspiel, Austria. FACTS: 2454 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica; (310) 395-2212. Dinner Tuesday through Saturday; lunch Tuesday through Friday. Dinner appetizers, $4.25 to $13.75; main courses, $13.75 to $24.95. Corkage $10. Valet parking.