No Reservations: Munich Haus is a Taste of Bavaria in Chicopee Center
Chicopee might not be the first place you think of when you want German food, but Hubie Gottschlicht has created a little bit of Bavaria in Chicopee center with his MUNICH HAUS. Located at 13 Center St., it is set in the old Bernadino’s restaurant across the street from City Hall.
Trained as a chef and butcher in Germany, Gottschlicht came to the United States 26 years ago after marrying a Chicopee native. He worked at the Student Price restaurant in Springfield for 15 years where he says Chef Rupprecht Scherff “taught me the American way of doing things.” Gottschlicht stayed there until getting an offer from the owner of Bernadino’s, who wanted to retire. He bought the restaurant and opened the Munich Haus in 2004.
I’d been there for lunch a number of times and had had some of Gottschlicht’s food at various catered business functions before I tried Munich Haus for dinner.
For lunch, I usually got one of the schnitzels. Schnitzel is traditionally a veal cutlet, pounded thin, breaded and sauteed with various accompaniments. Gottschlicht’s version uses a pork loin cutlet, both to hold down the price and because of his concern over hormones in the veal. He has a dozen schnitzels on the menu, ranging from the classic wiener schnitzel, a simple breaded and sauteed cutlet (which does use veal), to the more adventurous paprika schnitzel (with bacon, some hot paprika and a cream finish) to Berliner style (sauteed apples) and more exotic Parmesan and Bombay schnitzels. For lunch, the schnitzels range in price from $7.75 to $8.95. At dinner, they are $15.95 to $17.95.
There is also changing array of homemade sausages and traditional German favorites like sauerbrauten and beef roulade on the menu. There are a few seafood entrees and a vegetarian pasta, but you’ll want to think German food while you’re at Munich Haus. Prices are reasonable, with dinners in the $15 to $24 range, with seafood dishes, and one or two veal entrees at the high end.
The wine list has a good selection of German bottles, as you might expect, with some reds as well as the more well-known whites. A plus for wine aficionados is that the wine list is on the restaurant’s Web site (www.munichhaus.com). Wines are available by the glass or the bottle. We had the Spatbrugunder Pinot Noir, $7 and $24, which was a nice surprise given that Germany is better known for its white wines.
However, I must say that beer really complements the food and the draft German brews are quite good. We had a Polaner beer, which was fantastic. Beers are available by the glass or by the stein, which seemed the size of a riding boot when it was brought to the table.
Two friends who are German food fans joined my wife and me for dinner at Munich Haus. We started off with the wurstplatte, a sausage-sampler dinner, for our appetizer. All the sausages, except for the knockwurst and kielbasa, are made on the premises. “Pork and seasonings. No nitrates,” explains Gottschlicht.
The sampler consisted of four sausages, a tasty chicken bratwurst, a more traditional pfalzer bratwurst, long Nuremburg bratwurschens and a knockwurst, accompanied by spaetzle (think tiny egg pasta dumplings, sauteed in butter), red cabbage and sauerkraut. They were all good, but we all loved the chicken bratwurst.
Our dinners included a Jaeger schnitzel, sauced with four types of mushrooms, sauerbrauten, a schlacht platter and a Bavarian platter. The schlacht platter was supposed to come with rabbit, but, as Gottschlicht explained, most commercial rabbit is imported from China and is currently unavailable. The Bavarian platter featured sauerbraten, Jaeger schnitzel and more sausages.
Eating the Jaeger schnitzel, I was reminded of another Jaeger schnitzel I had while traveling. That schnitzel was a decent cutlet with a pasty white sauce. Not so at the Munich Haus. The sauce is dark and rich and the different mushrooms contribute a lot of flavor. The sauerbraten was our least favorite, a little drier and not as strongly flavored as we’d like. The beef roulade, which was on the schlacht platter, was wrapped around a slice of dill pickle and reminded my friend Tom of his mother’s version of the dish.
Some of our entrees came with salads. The Caesar arrived with anchovies and the house salad was accompanied by a Roquefort dressing that Gottschlicht learned from Rupprecht Scherff.
We were more than a little stuffed when we’d finished, but duty called and we ordered the apple strudel for dessert. My friend Kitty, an excellent baker, was surprised that the dough was not flaky. “It is Bavarian-style and not Viennese. It has to be chewy,” Gottschlicht explained when I asked him. The strudel is his mother’s recipe and, flaky or not, a fitting conclusion to the meal.
In addition to being open seven days a week for dinner, Munich Haus hosts some special events. The Hops Club is a monthly get-together for beer aficionados. You join the club, purchase a stein, and meet the third Wednesday of every month to sample a German beer along with dinner. In May, when the weather is nice, Munich Haus opens the front deck as a beer garden and offers all-you-can-eat grilled sausages on Tuesday and Thursday nights.
The restaurant is large, with a banquet hall in back, but it is a comfortable place to eat dinner, especially at one of the booths in the bar area. Given the ample parking and ready access off I-391, it is an easy place to visit.
This article originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, April 04, 2008.