Restaurant zur Rebe, Hammerstrasse, Basel

The best thing after the game wasn’t that Switzerland dominated, devastated, demoralized and completely obliterated the German national football team. The best thing was, that a german buddy now owns me 20 hard swiss francs (none of this reeling Euro stuff). Winning feels twice as good when you can rub it in someone’s face, of course being a sensible, mature and grown-up man I would never succumb to such lowly sentiments… To celebrate we headed to the Restaurant zur Rebe in Kleinbasel. Very nice interior all wood, classic old-school even including a clock that strikes every fifteen minutes. Only surprise was, that on a Saturday night there were only three tables booked.

The amuse bouche was a tasty chicken salad, a bit too large for an amuse in my opinion but not bad. I had a lot of trouble deciding what to eat since the menu was rather appealing. I did find that maybe truffle oil was featured on too many items, but I guess if you’re into that you’ll like it. I started off with an interesting Pot au Feu with some foie gras. Pretty amazing, clearly creative, strong broth, nice liver excellent crunch delivered with some vegetables thrown in and I liked the two odd raviolis floating in the broth as well.

The second dish was a poached egg with spicy morel sauce, white asparagus and mashed potatoes with truffle oil. I didn’t get much of the spice and in hindsight I think the combination of morel sauce, mashed, truffled potatoes and asparagus isn’t that nice, since the asparagus flavor takes a backset to the potatoes.

My main was a guinea fowl, stuffed with spinach, same mash as above and green asparagus. Not much to complain on the bird, I wasn’t too happy with the asparagus, which were too soft and on the salty side. The dessert (another daily special) were some strawberries topped with a Cointreau Sabayone. The kitchen really knocked this one out the park, it was simple in terms of the components used, perfectly executed and the orange flavor of the liquor gave it a nice taste – well done.

Overall the place is pretty good value for money, 270 CHF for two dinners incl. two bottles of wine is pretty good. I guess my recommendation would be stick with the daily specials, they were winners, the regular menu items didn’t convince me as much.

Oh yeah and every dinner is better after having seen a 5-3 victory against Germany (the first in 56 years…)