FIVE IN COLOGNE
Five favourite foodie finds from my most recent trip to the city of Cologne.
As a foreigner — and I want to emphasise that I am one, because those born there feel very differently — Cologne isn’t easy to love. The city itself isn’t exactly eye candy, its surroundings aren’t either, and there is, if we are being specific, infinitely more faeces on the sidewalks than there should be. But if you learn to look past all of that — and in the many times I have been there, I have — you will find not only the loveliest locals you could imagine, but also really, really delicious food.
And so here they are: my five favourite foodie finds from my most recent trip to Kölle.
WEINBISTRO L’ESCALIER
Brüsseler Strasse 11, 50674 Cologne
You know you’re in the right place when the Insta bio of the restaurant you’re at reads #nobutternoparty. Behind L’Escalier is a chef with serious gastronomic pedigree: Daniel Lengsfeld honed his craft in Berlin, working as sous chef under two-Michelin-star chef Tim Raue — until love brought him to the Rhineland. And the genius that Daniel is in the kitchen, his wife Stephanie is out among the guests: it will be hard to find a more passionate, more welcoming, more infectiously cheerful host just about anywhere on this planet. Together, they’ve transformed a former Michelin-starred address in Cologne’s Belgisches Viertel into a relaxed wine bistro with a daily-changing, French-inspired and obviously butter-heavy menu. The kind of place where the food alone would be reason enough to stay, but then there is Stephanie, and then the wine comes, and you stop making plans altogether. Or, in short, the kind of place you sit down in and never quite want to leave ever again.
FEINRIPP & GOLD
Ehrenstrasse 43c, 50672 Cologne
Feinripp & Gold is the project of two chefs, Grischa Herbig and Caspar Krings, who both come with serious fine dining credentials — and who decided, at some point, that the world needed a better sandwich. The whole thing started as a pop-up at the Bredouille wine bar in May 2024, but luckily sometimes, only rarely, good things do not come to an end. Now in a permanent location in Cologne’s centre, the concept has remained the same: sandwiches that combine comfort food with nuances of haute cuisine — think pulled ossobuco with truffle mayo, Italian-style meatballs with parmesan, or grilled aubergine with smoked almonds. Everything from the sauces to the kimchi is made in-house. And one week later I am still struggling to think of a sandwich that, in all my years of life, has topped it.
