Urs Willhelm, Altnau, Thurgau

I’ve come to like the Mobility Micro Smart MHD, it’s like a Go Kart with a roof. After 10 years of being an accident-free holder of a swiss driver’s license, the time has come to add more accident free years but this time acctually while driving a car. My newly found freedom has led to a much larger radius of operation, so places in a far away corner in Thurgau are suddenly of interest.

Urs Willhelm is/has a restaurant in Altnau in an old house in the middle of the town. The interior and the dining experience can best be described as baroque. But first you need to be able to enter the dining room, since the door is locked on the outside and you must ring the door bell to enter, a rather peculiar system. The menu is hard to read, since the handwriting is on the verge of being hieroglyphic.

The salad was advertised as being one of the last ones available from the restaurant’s own garden, together with herbs and an apparently legendary salad sauce. To spice things up there’s a choice of fish and meat components you can add. The salad was beautiful, served on a plate and with more leaves & herbs in a separate bowl. The salad sauce (served separately in a small jug) was certainly a very good rendition, but not necessarily famous. However the small helping of Eglifilets where simply to die for. Very lighltly battered, seasoned with great restraint and cooked with the utmost care, this is a long way from the Eglisfilets you get in most places.

The shrimp with european cocktail sauce were again perfectly cooked. The slight sprinigness is exactly to my liking, this shows the great skill of the chef! The sauce was not quite to my liking, a rather old-fashioned cocktail sauce with candied ginger and peppers. Main course was again a highlight – simply perfectly sized pieces of filet of beef with Stroganoff sauce, served on a plate and in a separate bowl.

Interesting price wise fact is that the salad was more expensive than the Eglifilets, the 43 CHF for the first course are certainly rather aggresive, but for once you really get what you pay for. The Urs Willhelm restaurant is baroque but in a good way. For classic dishes you’ll get exellent value albeit at a price which matches. Then again, since I’m driving now – I save a lot of money on wine!