The Bamberg List
Five editorial picks, ranked by the only filter that matters: why you are dining.
Schlenkerla
The 14th-century smoked-beer tavern that is the single most atmospheric room in Bavaria — oak casks, black-beamed ceilings, and the best schäuferla in the world.
Zum Sternla
Germany's oldest guesthouse, open since 1380, still serving Franconian cooking in two candlelit rooms — and they take walk-ins.
Weinhaus Messerschmitt
The 1730s wine house where the aviation engineer was born and Franconian Silvaner has been poured for three centuries — modern cooking, ancient walls.
Klosterbräu Bamberg
Bamberg's oldest brewery (1533), whose riverside beer garden is the city's most beautiful summer room — and whose kitchen still roasts the schweinshaxe in the original wood oven.
Eckerts
The cathedral-hill chef's kitchen that put modern Franconian cooking on the Bamberg map — seasonal tasting menus, a 500-bottle cellar, and the best river terrace in the city.
Best for First Date in Bamberg
Intimate, conversation-friendly rooms. Impressive without being intimidating. The tables where first impressions are made.
Schlenkerla
The 14th-century smoked-beer tavern that is the single most atmospheric room in Bavaria — oak casks, black-beamed ceilings, and the best schäuferla in the world.
Zum Sternla
Germany's oldest guesthouse, open since 1380, still serving Franconian cooking in two candlelit rooms — and they take walk-ins.
Klosterbräu Bamberg
Bamberg's oldest brewery (1533), whose riverside beer garden is the city's most beautiful summer room — and whose kitchen still roasts the schweinshaxe in the original wood oven.
Best for Business Dinner in Bamberg
Power tables, private rooms, considered wine lists. Where the deal gets done.
Weinhaus Messerschmitt
The 1730s wine house where the aviation engineer was born and Franconian Silvaner has been poured for three centuries — modern cooking, ancient walls.
Eckerts
The cathedral-hill chef's kitchen that put modern Franconian cooking on the Bamberg map — seasonal tasting menus, a 500-bottle cellar, and the best river terrace in the city.
The Top 5 in Bamberg
Our editorial ranking. A single punchy line per restaurant. Click through for the full read.
Schlenkerla
The 14th-century smoked-beer tavern that is the single most atmospheric room in Bavaria — oak casks, black-beamed ceilings, and the best schäuferla in the world.
Zum Sternla
Germany's oldest guesthouse, open since 1380, still serving Franconian cooking in two candlelit rooms — and they take walk-ins.
Weinhaus Messerschmitt
The 1730s wine house where the aviation engineer was born and Franconian Silvaner has been poured for three centuries — modern cooking, ancient walls.
Klosterbräu Bamberg
Bamberg's oldest brewery (1533), whose riverside beer garden is the city's most beautiful summer room — and whose kitchen still roasts the schweinshaxe in the original wood oven.
Eckerts
The cathedral-hill chef's kitchen that put modern Franconian cooking on the Bamberg map — seasonal tasting menus, a 500-bottle cellar, and the best river terrace in the city.
The Bamberg Dining Guide
Bamberg is the most intact medieval city in Germany. The Allied bombers that flattened Nuremberg and Würzburg in the last year of the Second World War missed Bamberg almost entirely, and as a result the old town — a dense tangle of 11th-century cathedral, timber-frame burgher houses, cobbled market squares, and ten still-active breweries — has survived in a state the rest of the country can only imagine. UNESCO World Heritage listed it in 1993. The population is 77,000. You can walk it in a day.
The food is Franconian: pork knuckle, Bamberger Hörnla potatoes, locally milled sourdough, carp from the Aischgrund ponds in winter. But Bamberg's signature is liquid. It is the only city in the world where Rauchbier — beer brewed with malt smoked over beechwood — is still brewed as an everyday style, and the two remaining Rauchbier breweries (Schlenkerla and Spezial) both operate taverns where the beer is still served from oak casks in ceramic half-litres. It tastes, on first approach, like bacon. By the second glass, it tastes like Bamberg.
The dining scene below the UNESCO layer is quietly serious. Modern Franconian chefs are working with Spessart venison, Hallertau herbs, Franconian Silvaner and the Aischgrund carp to produce tasting menus that would register in Munich but cost 30 percent less. Reservations matter less than in Nuremberg. Jackets are never required; dirndl and lederhosen will get sidelong smiles but no objection. Rauchbier is best served with the smoked-meat dishes or a sharp Franconian cheese.
Neighbourhoods
Reservations & Practical Notes
For a deeper editorial read, see our ongoing Editorial coverage. Including pieces on the Best Restaurants for Every Occasion, and our Impress Clients and First Date occasion guides.