Behind the French Menu: Lorraine

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Brasseries in France.

Brasseries in France.
from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

Brasserie Georges, Lyon.
Photograph courtesy of Jeanne Menjoulet
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jmenj/25283371869/

A brasserie is a brewery in French. Even 200 years ago the Alsace and the Lorraine in Northern France were known for their many small but good craft breweries that also served light meals. Today more that 50% of the beer brewed in France comes from large breweries in the Alsace and Lorraine.

The Alsace and the Lorraine.
Alsace-Lorraine territory, France
Brittanica AI

The history of Brasseries in France.

In 1871, Germany had mostly become a single German state, having already precipitated the Franco-Prussian War against France in 1870. This war led to the exile of Napoleon III to England and the establishment of France’s Third Republic. After Germany’s victory, it annexed most of the French regions of Alsace and Lorraine. Following the annexation, there was a rush of emigrants from Alsace in the new German territory to Paris and the south.

Brasserie Lipp in Paris.
Photograph courtesy of Blowing Puffer Fish
https://www.flickr.com/photos/changyisheng/15292132777/

The first brasseries were in Paris.

Some of these Alsatian immigrants had worked in or owned brasseries in the Alsace brewing and selling beer. In Paris, and in other cities, they opened restaurants whose first menus were typically Alsatian, and some did, in the beginning, brew their own beer. These brasseries began as open noisy restaurants and, apart from whatever else they offered, they included traditional Alsatian dishes including Choucroute, pickled cabbage; Timbales, pies; Foie Gras, fatted goose and duck liver; Baeckeoff e, a hearty stew, and of course beer.

Le Grand Café, bar-brasserie in the town of Moulins.
Its decoration has remained unchanged since 1899.
The style is a mixture of Art Nouveau and Art-Déco.
Photograph courtesy of Jean-Pierre Dalbéra
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dalbera/3831503092/

At the end of the World War I, Alsace and Lorraine returned to French rule. A new wave of Alsatian immigrants arrived, following the success of those who had come before. By the 1920s, Art Deco had become popular and many brasseries are still recognized today by their unique Art Deco exteriors and interiors. Well-established offered full menus including Alsatian specialties, and they continued to sell more beer than wine.

Brasserie Le Champ de Mars, Paris France
Photograph courtesy of zoetnet
https://www.flickr.com/photos/zoetnet/4852021504/

The Brasserie Today.

Today, brasserie menus may have less obvious links to the Alsace; in some cases, perhaps only a quarter of the menu offers Alsatian dishes and wines, and they may sell more wine than beer. Today, the brasserie has shifted from its purely Alsatian roots into a more general symbol of French reliability.

Brasseries are more likely, especially in Paris, to offer service continu. Unlike restaurants that close between lunch and dinner, many (but not all) brasseries are open from 7:00 AM until midnight or later, serving the same full menu all day.

The Modern Brasserie Menu

While you’ll still find Alsatian dishes, modern menus in the larger brasseries now include the "Greatest Hits" of French cuisine. Expect to see:

Steak Frites and Steak Tartare: The quintessential French comfort foods.

Onion Soup and Escargots (snails): In almost every brasserie.

While brasserie means brewery, wine has largely overtaken beer in popularity. Most modern patrons will order a carafe of house wine or a crisp white (like an Alsatian Riesling) rather than a pint of lager.

Connected Posts:

Baeckeoffe – A Traditional Alsatian Peasant Stew That Made the Big Time.

Choucroute Garnie. Famous Dishes of France’s Alsace Region.

Crabes - Crabs. Crabs Among the Crustaceans on Your French Menu. Crustaceans II.

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Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
bryangnewman@gmail.com
Copyright 2010, 2016, 2025.

Choucroute and Choucroute Garnie. Choucroute from the Alsace in French Cuisine

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

Choucroute Garnie for eight.

Photograph courtesy of Pierre LANNES

www.flickr.com/photos/titounet/8727500919/

The Alsace, the home of Choucroute.

The Alsace, the historic French region, includes the departments of Bas Rhin and Haut Rhin that border Germany to the North and Switzerland to the east. (Since 1-1-2016 along with the Alsace the old regions of Lorraine and the Champagne Ardennes have been joined together in the new super region of the Grand Est). Dining in the Alsace offers the finest of French cuisine and traditional Alsatian dishes prepared by some of France’s outstanding chefs. Two of the most well-known traditional dishes are Choucroute, a pickled cabbage similar to the German Sauerkraut and Choucroute Garnie a humungous dish of meats and sausages served at family celebrations served on a bed of choucroute.

The story of choucroute

Choucroute, the pickled cabbage of the Alsace, like most pickled foods dates back to the days before refrigeration. Throughout the Old World pickling vegetables for winter was one of the few ways to have a guaranteed supply of green vegetables in winter. It is made with either the familiar white cabbage seen everywhere or preferably with Alsace’s own strain of giant white cabbages the Choux Quintal d'Alsace.

The Quintal d’Alsace cabbage can reach 7 kilos (14 lbs).

Photograph courtesy of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

Choucroute and Sauerkraute.

Sauerkraut’s creation is associated with Germany, and the Alsace and its neighbor the Lorraine do have a long association with Germany. The Alsace and the Lorraine were passed back and forth like a football between France and the various rulers of the German States and then again with a united Germany. Among the results were the addition of many German-influenced dishes to the Alsatian menu, and the use of a German dialect called Allemand Alsacien or Elsässerditsch still used alongside French. Despite these clear connections the local citizens will spend time explaining how their choucroute is far superior to German sauerkraut. They will explain that it is not only the added baies de genièvre, juniper berries, which some German recipes also use; there is much more to choucroute than just pickling cabbage for eight weeks. Choucroute is part of the Alsatian psyche.

Choucroute is a garniture, the accompanying vegetable.

Boudin Noir Sur Choucroute, Pommes Vapeurs et Légumes du Jour – Pork blood sausage, black pudding in the UK, served on a bed of Choucroute accompanied by steamed potatoes and the day’s vegetables.

Cuisse De Canard Conﬁt Sur Lit De Choucroute Braisée – Slowly cooked (confit) duck’s leg served of a bed of braised choucroute -

Duo de Sandre et Saumon Sur Choucroute, Pommes Vapeur, Sauce au Riesling – A matched serving of zander (pike-perch) and salmon that will allow the diner to enjoy the different tastes and textures of both fish flavored with an Alsatian Riesling wine served on a bed of choucroute accompanied by steamed potatoes.

Choucroute aux quatre poissons.

Choucroute with four different fish.

Photograph courtesy of Pierre LANNES

www.flickr.com/photos/titounet/16840204550/

Jarret de Porc Braisé Sur Lit de Choucroute- A braised cut from across the bone from a pig’s shank; the leg. This cut, when used for veal, is called osso buco in Italian and jarret de veau in French. This is a meaty cut with a bone marrow center that will provide a great deal of flavor while the meat is slowly cooked and then served on a bed of choucroute.

Cuisine à l'Alsacienne - Traditional Alsatian cuisine

Dining in the Alsace includes many dishes without choucroute: timbales, pies; foie gras, fattened goose and duck liver; carp dishes; tarte flambée, the dish the locals call flammen kuechen, and by others is often wrongly called Alsatian Pizza, excellent cakes, unique Alsatian honeys, Munster cheese, and much more. Today, you will rarely find a restaurant that only serves traditional Alsatian dishes, and despite that caveat, traditional accents and dishes will appear on menus along with modern French cuisine creating interesting combinations. There are many excellent chefs in the Alsace, and they are not only found in the most expensive restaurants.

Tarte tarte flambée

Photograph courtesy of janebelindasmith

www.flickr.com/photos/near_fantastica/3572534526

Choucroute Garni

Choucroute Choucroute Garnie is the Alsace’s famous humongous dish of sausages and meats that are at the heart of any local celebration. To begin with, a Choucroute Garnie includes two or more pork-based sausages including the region’s own Saucisse de Strasbourg and a local boudin noir, a pig’s blood sausage called a black pudding in the UK. The meats will be pork shoulder, smoked pork shanks, and other pork cuts. Goose, also an Alsatian favorite, may occasionally replace some of the pork or be added to it. The sausages and meats will have been simmered in the oven; each component is added one on top of the other, in accordance with the cooking time required.

Choucroute Garni

Photograph courtesy of Femme Actuelle

The main garnish for Choucroute Garnie is rather obviously the Alsace’s famous, juniper berry flavored, pickled cabbage called choucroute. While the meats and sausages were cooking in the oven, the choucroute, the dish’s essential companion, would have been cooking on the top of the stone being flavored with meat stock, gravy from the meats in the oven, goose fat, and herbs. Just before serving the choucroute will have an additional flavoring added when one of the région’s own great white wines is added; usually an Alsatian Riesling AOP.

Riesling from the Alsace.

Photograph courtesy of cave-beblenheim.

Then comes the presentation.

For the seated diners a well-presented platter of Choucroute Garnie can be awesome. A platter that I saw prepared and presented to a table of twelve was absolutely incredible; I think it would have sufficed for a table of twenty-four, it required two servers just to carry and display the platter. Choucroute Garnie is a dish for a crowd so its best to order Choucroute Garnie when you are at least six diners, the more, the merrier. Order an aperitif while waiting, but do not even think of ordering an hors d’oeuvre or an entrée, the French starter, you will never finish a whole Choucroute Garnie anyway. When the dish is ready, at the tinkle of a bell or with a clap of hands the server, and possibly the chef as well, will enter the dining-room bearing the platter of Choucroute Garnie. With the presentation of Choucroute Garnie so important at celebrations, the dish will be carried around the table so all the diners may enjoy the display before it is served.

Take Choucroute Garnie home with you.

Photograph courtesy of CasinoShop.fr

Always order Choucroute Garnie in an Alsatian specialty restaurant; even better, get invited to a Sunday dinner or celebration in a private home. All the components should cook together for several hours, and for that, you need someone who knows what he or she is doing; the presentation should also be a delight for the eyes. I am not a diehard Choucroute Garnie aficionado, but, when I do need my bi-annual Choucroute Garnie fix, I stay with the original, with all the bells and whistles.

How tourism has changed the Alsatian menus.

With the advent of mass tourism, the visitors with their varied tastes encouraged local restaurants to broaden their menus. Many visitors knew about the reputation of Choucroute Garnie but some did not want a dish with such a high-fat content, and some did not want all the pork that is part of the original recipe. The result will be will found in the restaurants that have upgraded the name and the recipes of Choucroute Garnie.

Your menu may offer:

Choucroute Royale - Choucroute Garnie prepared by using the Alsace’s sparkling crémant wine instead of the usual Riesling, it is added just before serving. Despite the use of this excellent crémant, from my experience, it does not make a significant change in the taste that an Alsatian Riesling provides. The Royale version of Choucroute Garnie would seem to me to be a dish originally created for the tourists with fat wallets.

Choucroute au Fruits de Mer – Choucroute served as an accompaniment to seafood. This and other similar dishes at least do not include Garnie in their title. Choucroute Garni needs meats that must be cooked for hours to create distinctive flavors; fish cannot be prepared like that. Choucroute au Fruits de Mer is what is; sea fish and seafood accompanied by choucroute. The Alsace is far from the sea, but fresh seafood arrives daily, and Alsatian chefs do wonderful things with shellfish including shrimps, Dublin Bay prawns, mussels and oysters among other options.

Choucroute au Poisson – Like the dish above, here the Alsace’s signature choucroute accompanies locally caught or locally farmed freshwater fish that will be chosen from among trout, pike, carp, Wels catfish, tilapia, freshwater perch, eels, pike-perch, and others. Usually, this dish is made with a single fish though a number offer two or even four; when the menu is not clear ask. The freshwater fish of the Alsace are excellent.7y

Choucroute de la Mer – Choucroute served with salt-water fish; the fish of choice may include gilthead seabream, red mullet, John Dory, monkfish or European sea bass.

The wines of the Alsace

The wines of the Alsace include some of the best white wines in France. Alsatian wines are also among the very few AOC wines known by the names of the grapes used. Apart from their dry and semi-dry white wines the Alsace also has some of France’s best sweet dessert wines. For choucroute try a semi-dry Gewürztraminer or a Pinot Gris d’Alsace also called or Clevner or Klevner. If it’s a celebration try a brut Crémant de Alsace. Or, try the local beer; nearly 50% of all the beers in France are produced in the Alsace and there are many microbreweries as well.

Gewurztraminer grapes in the Alsace.

Photograph courtesy of Randi Hausken

www.flickr.com/photos/randihausken/30304350585/

The Alsatians brought the brasseries to other parts of France.

Over many generations, Alsatians moved to other parts of France and some of were the owners and chefs of the originally Alsatian brewery based restaurants called brasseries. Today, a brasserie’s menu may have no connection to the Alsace while another, may give away its origins with specific Alsatian dishes on the menu.

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Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

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