Dorfy Day Trip: The Best Train Station Restaurant Ever

When you're a double threat like a Prince-Bishop,
you get live in a Brühl shack like this.

We all have regrets. They might be decisions we made or errors in judgement that haunt us long afterwards. Yep, I'm talking about train station food.

One of my many train station food regrets were two boiled sausages I bought because I was hungry and couldn't imagine a three-hour trip with an empty stomach. It did not long for me to start imagining how nice that train ride would have been on an empty stomach. 

The sad, week-old boiled sausages. The dry, crusty bread that tasted like diesel exhaust. Yellow mustard somehow made more yellow from age. If some foods can knock years off your life, that meal took a few off mine.

The train station in Brühl is a delicious exception to the rule, which is ironic considering when you pronounce Brühl: you draw out the umlauted 'u' like you're puking. Try it out loud.

You might not have an opportunity to practice saying it though. Brühl is a small village outside Cologne. Aside from the stately homes near the train station – usually these neighbourhoods are for scoring rock or smack, not a 19th century mansion – Brühl's main draw is the Max Ernst Museum and the fancy Baroque palace, with its gardens, Cologne's Prince-Bishop lived in.

After working up an appetite visiting an M.C. Escher exhibit at the museum, and it being a cold, soggy Rhineland afternoon, we went into the Brühler Wirtshaus for a warm snack and cold beer. 

It was crowded and not with the usual desperadoes you might encounter at a German train station. There were old folks and young families, all enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon at the train station.

Even without a reservation – they make those at this establishment – we managed to get a table in this crowded spot and order some beers – Brühl is just outside Cologne, putting in Kölsch country, which is fine by me because it's delicious stuff.

Kata ordered the tomato soup and the a warm pretzel, both of which passed muster with her, since she knows her soup and pretzels. The pretzel was served warm, an uncommon thing at a train station, but also with hunk of garlic butter. This was a first-class pretzel experience.

I got the Currywurst, which could go wrong when you order it in the wrong place. 

In its crudest, simplest form Currywurst is a sliced sausage covered with ketchup and curry powder, often with fries on the side. A nice place, like Brühler Wirtshaus, will blend the curry and ketchup into a tasty sauce. My first brush with it was from a Berlin street vendor, where the Currywurst slinger just squirted the ketchup onto the sausage and then shook some curry powder on top.

Most food places put a little effort into their Currywurst. There's a place in the Dorf that sprinkles gold dust onto theirs. Another outdoor patio spot on the Rhine serves so-so sausages with an amazing ketchup. The train station Currywurst in the Wirtshaus Brühler had the whole package: a decent sausage, fried crispy on the outside with a dose of ketchup that was actually spicy (German spicy is usually mild by North American standards).

So if you ever find yourself in Brühl, ask yourself why. If you know the answer, then hit Brühler Wirtshaus for the best train station dining experience ever.

Have you ever met happier people about to eat at a train station?