Tartare is a regular on Luxembourg menus, here are a few of the best places to try them…
L’Adresse
This tiny Parisian brasserie on Rue Notre Dame has one of the best kitchens in the city. The menu, which is scribbled on a chalkboard, changes with the seasons, but you can rest assured that quality is a constant. The tartare is simply exquisite and there’s not much more to add. You can ask for it pan-fried if you don’t want to eat it raw. After the meal, customers are given a black marker to leave some parting words on the wall which makes interesting reading if there is a lull in your conversation.
El Barrio Restaurante y Tapas Bar
The newly refurbished restaurant makes you feel as if you have died and gone to interior design heaven. It is a mix of modern and traditional, clean lines and minimalist furniture atop intricate patterned floor tiles. The menu offers a rich array of tapas options as well as sturdy main courses. Opt for the croquetas tasting, where you are served fried potato pillows stuffed with fillings such as Pata Negra, truffle or prawn. However, the showstopper is the smoked red tuna tartare which is brought to your table under smoke-filled glass dome.
Aal Schoul
Aal Schoul – Aal Schoul, ‘Old School’ in English, is the masterstroke of Thomas Murer – a semi-finalist in France’s answer to Master Chef. His acclaimed restaurant is actually housed in an old school and he has retained many of the original, nostalgia-inducing features.
The old school is located in a tiny, off-the-map Luxembourgish village called Hobscheid. Upon entrance you pass a big brass school bell, before viewing the menu on a chalkboard and sitting down at a desk-like table accessorized with children’s books.
However, there is nothing infantile about the sophisticated menu. Murer offers a modern twist on Luxembourgish cuisine, utilizing local producers to ensure the upmost freshness and flavour. Murer’s close link to his butchers and breeders means that he can ensure his beef is from cows fed with pure ingredients like hay and corn, giving it a marbled texture.
Here, the ‘Trilogy of Tartare’ is a must. It consists of tartare with truffle, classic beef tartare and tuna tartare with peanuts.
If you don’t go à la carte, the tasting menu offers a delicious curriculum of flavours and is the best way to sample Murer’s skill. Do note that with big blocks of Luxembourgish pâtés and foie gras, you need to stop for recess half way through the meal – especially if you want to enjoy the melting chocolate bomb at the end…
The highlight was a coin of pigeon dressed in bacon, drizzled with a blueberry sauce before your eyes. On the side was cacao crumble, 1km potatoes (as in they travelled less than one kilometre from terroir to table) and a ‘surprise macaron’.
In Luxembourg It's Three 