Tafelfreuden

The restaurant Tafelfreuden has been a fixture of Oldenburg's restaurant scene for about twenty years, during which the restaurant has expanded and acquired a superb reputation among the slow-food-crowd and locals keen on freshly produced, largely locally sourced organic produce. We visited last on a Wednesday night, when the diners seemed a relaxed lot of Oldenburgers in rooms with a homely atmosphere and favourable acoustics allowing for good conversation in the absence of piped music.

In addition to their regular a-la-carte menu Tafelfreuden offers a changing weekly specials menu. I choose from the specials: a starter, which was a very down to earth cabbage strudel, date yoghurt and a smoked duck breast that could as well have been any ham - somewhat unexciting (€9,80). For the main course the roasted Iberico pork with chestnut crust was superb and with the Brussels sprouts and potato gratin a comforting match for the autumn weather (€20,90). Brilliant!

The wine list offers a good range of about 40 organic wines, but doesn't annotate the vintage. The waitress was happy to bring the bottles for inspection and the under €30 reds checked were from fairly weak vintages.

Tafelfreuden benefits from an open kitchen, which looks spotless. The services appear to be modern and clean and so is the general setting.

The bill for four diners consuming four Proseccos, five starters, three main courses, a bottle of Organic Chianti, three coffees and a praliné chocolate mousse came to €35 per head. That offered us flawless food and drink, all feeling satisfied with food and service

Conclusion: Tafelfreuden may well be rated five star by many. It is certainly among the restaurants I like to return to.

Note: Extra kudos for the staff and the coffee. The waitress even showed us the milk they use in their coffees: Locally produced, certified organic full fat milk which I would like to encourage other restaurants in Germany to take on as a positive example!