Right Wing Nation

I guess it’s priorities, but when we moved here, the first thing we looked for was food. Food, as in excellent. As in restaurants.

State College is much like Bloomington when it comes to food: Very little in the way of memorable food to be found, unless you make it yourself. There is a nice little Italian place, not amazing, but better than any Italian available in Bloomington, and reportedly a far better Italian place on the other side of town, which we have not yet tried.

We had nearly despaired, until we discovered Herwig’s. Actually, that’s Herwig’s Austrian Bistro, Where Bacon is an Herb. As cute as the motto is, it really should be Where the Food Will Make You Cry. (Their other motto is Austrian Soul Food, and that it certainly is.)

An Austrian couple and their very young son moved from Austria to State College, to work as travel agents. The opened a restaurant, and the rest is history. Well, not a restaurant, really; Herwig’s is a tiny place, with only six booths. There is no printed menu. What they have is what is written on the chalkboard that day.

There is a German restaurant in Bellefonte, but we haven’t yet been there. Herwig’s has bumped going down on our list of priorities.

It’s not Bavarian, but it’s similar. The potato salad is similar, but different. No bacon, for one thing, and less vinegar. The only thing we don’t like are the knödel (klösse in Bavarian German, anglicized in Jasper as glaze), which in Germany are potato dumplings, but in Austria are made from bread and, well, they aren’t happy objects to eat.

The sauerkraut alone is enough to make you weep with joy — and I am serious. I have had dreams about a large plateful of that kraut, and nothing else. This isn’t kraut out of a bag or a jar; this is homemade kraut, cooked with apples and bacon, and is one of the most wonderful things I have ever put in my mouth. If you don’t like kraut, I assure you that you will moan in ecstasy as you eat this.

Even the sausages are homemade — and much like those wonderful sausages they used to make at St. Meinrad. The wienerschnitzel is heavenly, golden brown with not even the smallest little overdone or underdone spot. And the apfelstrudel, well, you could sit there all day just smelling it, though you do have to resist the temptation to jump into the mounds of whipped cream and inhale it all at once.

They don’t make rotkohl. That’s somewhat sad, but you can’t have everything. There is that German place in Bellefonte we haven’t tried.

And if the food weren’t enough, the experience of eating there is a story in itself. The family speak Germlich, switching back and forth sometimes mid-sentence between English and German (the son has no perceptible accent; he’s been here since he was three, I believe), and it feels not like a restaurant but a sit-down meal in someone’s home. The owners come out and talk to you and ask how everything is, there are little signs on the tables informing you that if you don’t eat everything you will be beaten with a large red stick, which is hanging on the wall, or for $35 you may have a doggie bag, or if you inform them beforehand of your small appetite they will give you half the food for twice the money. And as small as it is, customers interact with other customers, as well as the family.

We’ve been twice. We’ll be going at least once a week. At least.

They have a website, sort of, and there are pictures on the menu:

http://www.herwigsaustrianbistro.com/

Definitely State College’s best kept secret.

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If you drive souteast of State College, the road takes you gently down into the lowest part of Happy Valley, and you will find yourself in lovely Boalsburg, population 3500, home to the Pennsylvania Military Museum and the birthplace of Memorial Day.

Boalsburg, like Bellefonte to the north, is a town of old Victorians, charming, and friendly. The Danes would certainly call it hygge, and had there been a house for sale, I would have liked to have lived in Boalsburg. Just past the large church on Boalsburg Road you will suddenly see a cow on top of a building. Not a small cow, or a medium-sized cow, or even a large cow, but a monstrosity of a cow. On top of the building. You can’t miss it.

That is Kelly’s Steak and Seafood.

Now normally, such an immense cow on top of a restaurant would give me pause, but having come from Bloomington, where by far the best quality food it to be found at a steakhouse (Little Zagreb, if you ever find yourself in Bloomington), one of the first things we did when we got here was ask if there were any good ones here. We got a couple of recommendations from people who consider Outback to be a steakhouse, and unfortunately tried them. Then, people started telling us to go to Kelly’s.

We were going to go to Herwig’s (see above) Friday night, but we had forgotten the Homecoming parade — and there’s no avoiding downtown to go to Herwig’s, since it is downtown. So we went to Kelly’s.

It’s a good thing we called ahead to make reservations. Kelly’s was packed, and if we’d just gone, we would have waited at least an hour. We followed the hostess through a tastefully decorated restaurant into the “lounge” (that’s the bar) at the back — next to a pool room. This was odd. It’s not the kind of place you’d expect to find a pool room, kind of a dressed-down LL Bean chic kinda place. It wasn’t a problem, however, just a bit strange.

The waitress appeared almost immediately and gave us menus. It’s a nice long menu, though not really what I’d call a steakhouse. There are a lot of non-steak, non-seafood choices, and the chef seems to be quite fond of macadamias, as there were five or six choices that in some way incorporated them.

Since Kelly’s had been recommended for its beef, I decided to do just that. Oddly enough, the steaks are more expensive than the prime rib, and given that the prime rib is the best gauge for how well any restaurant treats the king of meats, I ordered it.

Hot rolls (and I do mean hot) were placed on the table, with soft garlic butter. And as we discovered, this was not the usual garlic in name only garlic butter; this was the real thing, full of fresh garlic, gently biting and luscious. We gave Kelly’s many points for that garlic butter.

Our food arrived promptly. The prime rib had been advertised as coming with both horseradish and jus (also, pedant points to the chef for not advertising it “with au jus,” or some such ignorant nonsense). But there was no horseradish sauce; instead, fresh root had been shredded onto the top of the prime rib. Many points for originality, though how it would work would be another question.

Ah, what an idea that was! The horseradish was finely shredded, and there was not enough to be harsh or overpowering. But the prime rib was absolutely top-notch. Beef has never been more delicious than what I had there Friday night. Kelly’s gets an A and a gold star.

The prime rib came with mashed potatoes, and my only complaint is there should have been more. Outstanding buttery potatoes. The roast veggies, winter squash, carrot, red bell pepper, red onion, and zucchini, were fine, though unexciting (but there’s not much you can do to make them any better than they were).

Excellent food, at about the same prices as Little Zagreb. We will go back many times.

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Ten miles northeast of State College is Bellefonte, the county seat. Bellefonte is a town of about 6500, and like Boalsburg, it is mostly beautiful old Victorians, and the feel of the town is every bit as hygge or warm and friendly as Boalsburg.

Where Boalsburg is definitely in the valley, lower than we are here just outside State College, Bellefonte is certainly not. It reminds me of Wayne, West Virginia, where I have kin, a town built on the mountain. If you go, make very sure your parking brake is in top condition, because you will likely park on a slope that makes the hills in San Francisco look positively flat. And if you’re into exercise, merely walking in Bellefonte will do it, since you’ll be walking up and down very steep slopes.

Another difference is that Boalsburg is much more like a small town in the rural sense, where there is a very tiny business district, but mostly houses — much like Smithville or Dubois (as in Dubois Indiana, not Pennsylvania). Bellefonte is the county seat, and has a larger, more well defined business district around the courthouse. It also has Spring Creek, a large mountain stream that provides the water for the area and runs through Bellefonte. It’s a lovely town, again definitely hygge, though not necessarily exciting (but that’s a good thing, thank you very much).

Next to the stream is the Bush House Hotel, and in it, Schnitzel’s Tavern, a Bavarian restaurant much like the Schnitzelbank (that would be the one in Jasper, again Indiana).

Herwig’s is divine, but they don’t do sauerbraten or rotkohl (whimper!) and the knödel are vile (being made from bread and being somewhat doughy in a nasty sort of way). So we hopped in the car and drove to Bellefonte Saturday, since it’s only ten miles. Even if the food was awful, Bellefonte is always lovely to look at.

The Tavern is beneath the hotel. The decor doesn’t approach the cheeze factor of the Schnitzelbank: no coats of arms on the walls and noboby in dirndls. The walls are sandstone, and the outside wall runs along the stream, with a table in front of each window.

We were given the lunch menu, which was a bit of a let-down: I mean, why on earth would you go out for a bratwurst sandwich? But at the bottom it says something like, “Some dinner entrees available, ask your waiter,” so we asked.

She rattled of a long list of things that were available — the sauerbraten was not, but that’s not surprising. We settled on the last item, the badischer schnitzel, wienerschnitzel served over buttered noodles and smothered in a quark sauce with mushrooms (she said sour cream, but it was quark), and rotkohl.

Oh. My. God.

You’re thinking that sounds really good, but you just don’t know. It was simply amazingly good. It was also heavier than your usual German fare, which is saying a great deal, and again, I left never wanting to eat for the rest of my life. The rotkohl was quite good, too.

We will go back there too, many times. She brought us the dinner menu and we’ll have to work our way through every item.