Central Restaurant

Lange Reihe 50,

20099 Hamburg

Germany

Telephone: +49 40 280 537 04

http://www.central-hamburg.de/central/opener.html

Overall rating: 7/10

Date of visit: December 2014

 

Central Restaurant was a place we stumbled upon by coincidence as we had wanted to go to another restaurant nearby, and that one turned out to be full.

The prices at Central were not in the lower end, but definitely worth it. The restaurant itself was simplisticly and elegantly decorated in mostly white.

Some of us, including me, started out with a starter of Goat cheese with a bit of lettuce and a compot of figs and tomatoes, which was a very nice dish. Especially some of us were very enamoured with this dish. Some of us had chosen a fish menu, which was two courses (starter and main) for €26.50, and this menu included this starter. A la carte, this dish was €9.50.

Two of us had chosen the vegetarian menu (€22.50 for two courses), where the starter was a lentils soup, but unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of that one.

Before the main course we had a small complimentary dish from the kitchen, which was a roll with sundried tomatoes.

My main course was organic pork chops with dauphinois potatoes, red cabbage and a braising sauce with rosemary. This was a bit pricey at €26.50. It was a nice dish, although not quite as creative as most of the other things served here, and hence the price for this particular dish seemed a bit too steep.

For the fish menu, the main course was spined loach with a puree of peas and mint, baked cherry tomatoes and parmesan foam.

For the vegetarian menu, the main course was a strudel with aubergine and polenta surrounded by a tomato and mango salad with pine nuts and rocket leaves topped with a parmesan foam. The mango was not the very best quality, but still nice.

So, the food was not Michelin star quality, but it was solid cooking with more flavour and more creativity than you would expect for this price. The night before we had gone to a traditional German restaurant for beer, wienerschnitzel and so on, and while Central Restaurant was definitely more expensive, all of us enjoyed this a lot more. And I have to say that I was the one who was the least impressed with the food at Central Restaurant, and still I was happy with this meal.

We shared a bottle of wine, a Markus Moliter Haus Klosterberg pinot blanc from the Mosel area, which set us back £29. A search on Wine-searcher showed that the average price for this wine in the last seven years had been £20, and the only shop that website suggested charged €31 for a bottle. I did find it on a Danish website, although that site was actually run by a German company, where the price was €11. Nevertheless, a reasonable markup for a wine that all of us really enjoyed.

The service was not Michelin star level either but not far from it, and some might have preferred this. It was far from the stiff uber-polite service you might encounter in a starred place, and instead very forthcoming. Our waiter was from Afghanistan, and as my wife at the time was Iranian they could speak Farsi together. He also poured water and wine for us, which is usually only seen in starred places.

So, a very enjoyable restaurant that all of us would be happy to come back to.