And Now for Schnitzel

While in Cologne I stopped for dinner at a restaurant call "Gilden im Zims" located on Hay Market Square in the Old Town.  The picturesque half timbered building is 550 years old, although the foundations date back to Roman times.  In 1920, Johann Zims acquired the building and opened a restaurant here.  In 1943 during the Allied bombing of Cologne, the Zims family took refuge in the cellar.  When the dust settled, all that was left was the facade of the building.  After the war, the family rebuilt and reopened the restaurant.

The restaurant was jammed, mostly with tourists, but I managed to find a table inside.  In spite of the crowd, the service was quick and efficient.

As a starter, I had the goulash soup, which I found rather disappointing.

However, the schnitzel with mushroom sauce was excellent.

Schnitzel, a thin cutlet of breaded meat is probably the dish most associated with Germany and Austria.  However, its origin is in the Italian city of Milan where a breaded veal cutlet known as "cotoletta a la milanese" was around since the Middle Ages.  Since northern Italy was long a part of the Hapsburg empire, the dish traveled to Vienna, where it became extremely popular.  From there the dish traveled to Germany.  (Interestingly, in Mexico a breaded cutlet is called "milanesa".)  So, we can thank the Italians for that most Germanic of dishes.