It was lunchtime. My day had started at 3:46am as I live some distance from the airport and had to catch a flight at 6am. I had arrived in Bonn later than I was meant to but still had just enough time for lunch before my meeting.
Da Dante is situated in the Hotel Kanzler where I was staying and alas hotel restaurants do not normally excite me and this was no exception. I prepared myself for mediocre food along with high prices and in I went. Continue Reading…
I had been in Bonn in business for about a week. This was my second trip of the month and I was beginning to get more than a little bored. Bored of work, bored of Bonn but most of all bored of the bad Italian food that seemed to be served everywhere in Bonn.
I saw a train going to Bad Godesberg and Googled ‘best restaurant Bad Godesberg’. Of course the results were mostly sponsored nonsense and random restaurants. I tried again, this time adding ‘Italian’ to the search string. The top hit was a blog written by an American who had been living in Bonn for some time and was due to go back to the US. She explained that there was only one restaurant that she knew she would visit again before leaving; it was called Terra e Vino.
The blog post explained that this restaurant was hidden behind a row of shops; it was Bonn’s best-kept secret. I rang a colleague and 30 minutes later we got off the train at Bad Godesberg Banhoff. The instructions in the post were clear: turn right out of the station and keep walking until you see a courtyard on the left. We did as instructed and sure enough we found the restaurant nestled in what looked like a car park.
The restaurant didn’t look much from outside, but we had come this far and we certainly weren’t going to back out now! This was a very rustic place; we walked past the tiny, open kitchen and could see the seating area beside the enormous racks of wine. I knew immediately that this was going to be fun…
It was my first night in Bonn. I had arrived home from the USA only a day before and I was perhaps, a little grumpy. The temperature in Bonn the night I arrived was -12 degrees C.
I was staying at the Hotel Kanzler that, wasn’t exciting me every much as I had initially been informed that I would be staying at the Hilton and had all the relevant point promos organised.
The ‘bar’ in the hotel was laughable and certainly not the sort of place that I wanted to spend any time whatsoever. I asked at the hotel for a recommendation for a restaurant and was given the address of Giaccomos.
I jumped in a cab along with a colleague (as the hotel had neglected to tell me about the U-Bahn station a few minutes walk from the hotel) and €10 later, we were outside the restaurant.
I was in Bonn on business and had been staying a few weeks. It so happened that we were staying when the Bonn carnival was on. My client had informed me that the festival was on but I didn’t really understand how big an event this is to the locals. It was the Monday of the carnival and as people had been drinking since very early, most of the restaurants I saw were quiet. The same could not be said for the pubs!
I had wandered around Bonn with a colleague for a while and I saw an eatery that looked interesting; it was called ‘Casa del Gatto’ (Cathouse). The logo they used on the sign amused me so I stopped to look at the menu. There was the (normal for Bonn) selection of pizza, pasta and sandwiches. It was very cold and as it was getting late, in we went.
I had been in Bonn for almost a week with a colleague on business. We were disappointed with our recent German food experience, but weren’t yet ready to have more Italian. We soon discovered we each had a curry craving…
A search on a popular review website (who we wont mention here) suggested that we try Taj India; indeed this was rated 29th out of 431 restaurants in Bonn. We went on a U-Bahn adventure and found ourselves outside around 8pm.
Upon arrival I was slightly perturbed to catch a glance of the ‘Pizza’ section of the outside menu; I have never been to an Indian that serves pizza. Inside I wasn’t concerned by the almost-80’s décor as I naturally assumed this meant the food would be good. We chose a table and after a few minutes more than I would have liked, we were eventually given some menus by the Indian waiter.
I was in Bonn for a couple of weeks on business and was quickly working out that the centre of Bonn is not very big. One lucky colleague was with me on this trip and we needed some beer and if time, some food to go with it.
We found Roses a short walk from Bonn central station and after a quick glance in the window, decided to go in.
This is a funky place; a bar with comfy seats and a real fire to the right, and tables for the restaurant to the left.
We were greeted almost immediately and offered a seat of our choice. We sat next to the fire in the bar and looked at the drinks menu. It was fairly extensive with the normal beers that you would expect but also a good selection of wine. Had I not already decided on beer before entering, I may well have had a bottle of Argentinian Mendoza Clos De Los Siete (33 EUR), which looked yummy. I did have a little glimpse at the Rothschild too… and then at the 298 EUR price.
I was staying in Bonn for a few weeks on business. Someone in the hotel told me that they had the ‘perfect’ day in the ‘beautiful’ town of Königswinter that was a 20-minute U-Bahn ride from the hotel.
Being a Sunday, there was not much else to do (other than work which wasn’t exciting me), so I cajoled a colleague to join me and off we went.
We got off the train and saw a Sea Life centre, some snow and a very dull small German town. We had been told to cut through the town and find the railway, which would take us up the ‘mountain’. We managed to find said train easily, however we decide to walk up – which was probably a stupid decision in the snow. Suffice to say that the walk up was not worth what awaited us; not much more than a building site. We walked back down the hill and found this pub almost at the bottom. In we went; we had certainly earned a beer.
