Expatriate Lifestyle

The middle of the working week, in the rainy season, is probably a trying time for most restaurants, so you can't hold it against the newly-opened Karl's Beisl that at 7.30pm on a Wednesday evening, it was virtually deserted. Not least because that emptiness is entirely unwarranted. After the ordeal of the rain and the traffic on the way to Solaris, sinking into soft chairs at the homely restaurant with the aroma of roast pork on the air was blissful.

We started with a simple spinach salad, having ordered the mighty roast pork knuckles and Choucroute platter to share for mains (but more on that later). The baby salad leaves came tossed in a creamy, faintly mustardy dressing, topped with sweet roast peppers, and studded with chunks of crunchy roast potato and crispy strips of bacon. This may be my ignorance speaking but it was strongly reminiscent of everyone's favourite salad, the Caesar, matching nearly every element with an Austrian/European twist. This is no bad thing, because the salad was fresh and flavourful in its own right.

But onto what Karl's is already famous for-the roast pork knuckles. As mentioned, we'd asked for the Choucroute- a platter of pork belly, Kasseler ham, bratwurst, frankfurter, sauerkraut and bread dumplings with an add on of roast pork knuckles (RM88) and were eagerly awaiting this plate of pig. It didn't disappoint. There were three of us tackling the crispy crackling, tender sausages and fragrant ham, and we could have comfortably fed a fourth as well. My loyalties, rather boringly, are firmly with the round, stodgy bread dumpling that took pride of place over a bed of sauerkraut in the centre of the platter. It doesn't sound exciting, but its flavour elevated it beyond its status as a mere side filler, and I'd finished it before others were on their second slice of ham. My dining companions were more taken with the meltingly tender roast pork belly and the sheets of crackling on the pork knuckles. Everything was doused liberally with a mysterious 'pork gravy' and eaten with copious amounts of apple-scented sauerkraut.

We rounded things off, just to be fair, and not because any of us really had any room for dessert, with the Calvados apple strudel with vanilla sauce and a round of espressos. The coffee was piquant and fragrant, and took the edge off the strudel, which, despite a promisingly crisp layer of pastry and an enticing aromatic cloud of steam, proved just that little bit too sweet. But (sweet) teething problems are inevitable, and if Karl's only wins acclaim for its porcine pleasures, that's more than enough.