Photo by:B.A. Nilsson

The Best of Times, the Wurst of Times
By B.A. Nilsson

Bavarian Chalet
Route 20 and French’s Mill Road, Guilderland, 355-8005. Serving Mon-Fri 11-1, Sat 3-11. AE, D, MC, V.

Cuisine: German and Continental
Entrée price range: $15 (chicken piccata) to $16 (almost everything)
Ambiance: Rural lodge
Clientele: Sightseers

Seated in front of the kitchen door, we saw the chef go by a few times during the evening. The first time, he greeted us as he passed, but was indiscreet enough to shout, as he entered the kitchen, “Guess who’s dining here tonight? Santa Claus!”

On the one hand, it was a reminder to me that this is getting to be the wrong time of year for a gray-haired fat guy to sport a beard. I’m now clean-shaven. On the other, it’s a heads-up for restaurant people to keep the kitchen chatter quiet.

Santa resemblance notwithstanding, I can’t promise good things in this review.

The Bavarian Chalet opened more than 40 years ago, the creation of Franz Zwicklbauer, who ran Little Bavaria in Albany for several years before that. The 20-acre Guilderland site is as much a retreat as a restaurant, with a large, rambling building set on handsome grounds that include gardens and a nature preserve.

The Zwicklbauer family also owned a restaurant on Warner’s Lake, recently sold, now run with a couldn’t-care-less attitude that seems also to be infecting the Chalet.

We visited twice, first arriving on a Sunday evening a half-hour before the kitchen closed, which I was assured wasn’t a problem—but we came just as a bus tour of yappy old women was clearing out, and it had taken its toll.

With five in our party, there wasn’t a table set up in the main dining area, so we settled in a room off the bar, where a buffet was being broken down. That in itself wasn’t a problem, but the staff sure seemed tired.

The meal was terrific. Although the German specialties have been remanded to the menu’s back page, we made it a point to sample a variety of them and happily can report that the wurst plate (#15) is as good as ever, with a trio of plump sausages—weisswurst (or bockwurst), the soft, white variety, and two of the darker bratwurst type, along with the ever-excellent potato pancake, sauerkraut, and some dipping mustard.

Sauerbraten ($16) is a long-standing trademark: tenderizing a serving of beef with a long stay in a sweetened wine-based marinade, and pairing it with its accompanying gravy (as well as potato pancake and red cabbage) personifies the restaurant’s tradition. No less appealing is the jaeger (hunter’s) schnitzel ($17), a breaded veal cutlet served with a
mushroom sauce and including spaetzle, finger-sized dumplings.

Told that the stuffed pork chop wasn’t available, my friend Ron opted for the chicken piccata ($15), an Italian-inspired sautée that features lemon flavor; I ordered a flat-iron steak ($16), a small cut that normally hugs a chunk of gristle but proves to be tender and flavorful when properly trimmed, and it was quite delicious, served atop a worthy mound of mashed potatoes with a side of sautéed squash.

Hardly had our entrées been cleared, however, when we were slapped with a check by a fly-by server. I later asked if desserts were available but was too intimidated to order any.

Which was just as well; our second visit ended with a slice of very bad Black Forest cake. I worked for a German chef many years ago who searched far and wide for a baker to provide him with a good example of this multilayer confection. “Dessert and coffee are the last things you taste in a restaurant,” he insisted. “They have to be good.”

We hoped this second visit would show the floor staff in a better light, but there was no floor staff at all. Granted, it was early on a Thursday evening, but the floor was covered only by a fellow who spoke little English (and otherwise was, I think, a busboy) and a bartender reluctantly pressed into service.

It became something out of Fawlty Towers. My wife’s order of chicken Damiano ($16), in which spinach and eggplant are added to the grilled meat, with melted fontinella to finish, was fine, but my daughter was served a steak sandwich instead of the spare ribs she requested. While that was being sorted out, my pork chop arrived.

It turned out, as chef Matthew Juk explained, that while he no longer was offering the asparagus and brie stuffing, I could get a breaded or grilled chop (still $16), and on his recommendation I ordered it grilled.

I didn’t associate the peculiar odor with the meat at first. I thought it was my sneakers. Then I took a bite and nearly suffered self-induced whiplash. Juk credited the odor to a marinade based on Maggi seasoning, a Nestlé product that’s mostly monosodium glutamate and yeast; I think the meat was on the brink of going bad.

He offered to replace it with the flat-iron steak, but I wanted something different and opted for the rainbow trout ($15), which was nicely sautéed but fairly free of flavor other than the butter melted on top. And I discovered, long after we paid, that I was still charged for the more expensive pork chop.

It would be a shame to see this venerable institution collapse under the weight of tight-fistedness or apathy or whatever is causing its decline. Few German restaurants persist in this market, and in its heyday, the Bavarian Chalet showed us why they’re necessary.

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