Das Wirtshaus
101, 1324 - 11 Avenue SW, Calgary, AB
(403) 452-4853
Another friend's birthday had arrived with 15 of us heading out for dinner to Das Wirtshaus, a relatively new German restaurant known for its schnitzel. It's tucked in a little building off 11 Avenue where the Ruan Thai restaurant had been for years.
Das Wirtshaus had been on our list of restaurants to try for awhile and had been chosen for the birthday boy who has a severe garlic allergy, as garlic is generally absent in German food. His allergy is so severe that one night he ended up in emergency with his passage ways closing up, due to kissing his wife after she had eaten something with garlic that was still lingering on her lips. His wife wanted to ensure that he wouldn't receive another present consisting of another visit to the emergency room.
I've been into German restaurants in the past that felt like I had just entered Oktoberfest, but in this case, they have chosen a bit more of a modern décor. It's simple, with taupe walls, dark wood tables, brown leather booths and wood floors. Where I found some of the old mixed with the new was on their walls, with old fashioned oil paintings of mountain and village scenes as well as an extremely large moose head attached to the main wall.
If you haven't tried German food before, you'll find it very simplistic in its flavours with very little spice. Pork is their main meat, with potatoes as the most common side. When looking through the menu, they offer a soup of the day ($7.90) along with two salads, garden or chef ($10.90), served with either yoghurt or balsamic dressing. The mains run from $10.90 to $21.90 in price. They're most known for their schnitzel, but they also offer sausage and meatball dishes that all come with a choice of side, mixed vegetables, fries, warm potato salad, potato wedge or fried potatoes. For vegetarians there is spätzle, which is a pasta dish made with egg noodles mixed into a simple cream sauce.
They have nine types of schnitzel dishes, which consist of breaded and pan-friend pork loin cuts with various toppings such as blue cheese sauce, mushrooms and onion & parmesan sauce. I decided try the Paprika Schnitzel which had red pepper sauce drizzled over the pork, thinking it would probably be the most flavourful of all the sauces offered. It came with a complimentary garden salad or cream of potato soup and I settled on the garden salad with yoghurt dressing. I also ordered the rosemary potato wedges as my side. I paired it with one of their German beers on tap, Radeberger, a light pilsner ($7.50).
The food arrived with an extremely large piece of breaded pork, smothered in creamy red pepper sauce with chunks of red peppers throughout. I enjoyed the flavour of the sauce, which reminded me of a creamy red pepper bisque. Without the sauce however, it would have been quite a dry piece of pork and I also found the potatoes to be quite dry as well, so the sauce helped to flavour and moisten everything. I wasn't overly wowed by my plate and neither was anyone else at the table, all mentioning the dryness of their dishes.
Unfortunately, we weren't anymore impressed with the service than the food. We found the staff to be extremely you and unprofessional. Two servers had been assigned to our table and struggled to organize themselves properly to take our orders, with them having to constantly check with each other as to who ordered what. There was also no fill-ups of water unless you asked, and didn't bring the bill to our table when we had finished our meal. We were expected to go up to the till, look at the bill there and pay our portion.
Gratuity was automatically added to the bill because of the size of our group, which is standard practice, but sometimes I find that servers are less inclined to work as hard at providing top notch service and that was definitely the case when it came to our experience.
Gratuity was automatically added to the bill because of the size of our group, which is standard practice, but sometimes I find that servers are less inclined to work as hard at providing top notch service and that was definitely the case when it came to our experience.
We also found it strange that all three servers suddenly stopped serving us at 9:30 pm, with them standing behind the bar visiting and staring at us, even though we hadn't finished yet, and there was still another table behind us. If we wanted another beverage, one of us had to get up and go over to them to put in our request.
We hadn't paid attention to when the restaurant closes, as we enjoyed our final drinks, but as soon as the servers stopped serving us, we began looking for the hours on the window which showed 10:00 pm. Usually a table continues to be served until the guests are finished, as this shows good customer service and that you value return business but not in this case. Though we aren't the type of people to take advantage and hang out for an hour past closing time, we also don't feel bad staying a few extra minutes to finish up our last beverage.
Unfortunately as we exited the restaurant, we all agreed that we wouldn't ever return to Das Wirtshaus again. Though the lack of garlic had gotten us there, the bad customer service and mediocre food would now keep us away.
We hadn't paid attention to when the restaurant closes, as we enjoyed our final drinks, but as soon as the servers stopped serving us, we began looking for the hours on the window which showed 10:00 pm. Usually a table continues to be served until the guests are finished, as this shows good customer service and that you value return business but not in this case. Though we aren't the type of people to take advantage and hang out for an hour past closing time, we also don't feel bad staying a few extra minutes to finish up our last beverage.
Unfortunately as we exited the restaurant, we all agreed that we wouldn't ever return to Das Wirtshaus again. Though the lack of garlic had gotten us there, the bad customer service and mediocre food would now keep us away.
In spite of our less than desirable dining experience, we were still able to call his birthday a success. The birthday boy never did see the inside of an emergency room that night, and he was able to safely kiss his wife.
