Katzinger's Deli - Restaurant Week

I started Restaurant Week at Katzinger's in German Village. Although it's a deli noted for its lunch meat creations, Katzinger's does a fantastic job of rustling up a wide variety of vegetarian and vegan sandwich options, including one created just for Restaurant Week.

The special at Katzinger's is $20.09 for two (or $10.05 for one) with a choice of sandwich, side dish and dessert. Although there is only one vegetarian sandwich on the fixed price menu, there are two vegetarian sides and two vegetarian desserts.

The vegetarian sandwich is roasted eggplant and fresh mozzarella slathered in a tomato jam with a few various greens tossed on top, served on sliced fire bread. The bread lends a rustic, smoky quality to the sandwich, the mozzarella adds a delicious creaminess, and the tomato jam lends a mildly spiced midpalate to the flavor profile. The sandwich is great.

The mesclun mix is augmented with sliced pears, walnuts, lucious goat cheese and a raspberry vinaigrette. While the salad components are stellar (especially the flecks of goat cheese, which were out of this world), the dressing was cloyingly sweet. It lacked the proper acidity to act as a foil to the other ingredients in the salad. The quality of the ingredients, however, more than makes up for the minor flaw in the dressing.

The flourless chocolate cake with toasted pine nuts and fleur de sel sea salt was a decadently rich conclusion to the meal. The notes of dark chocolate come through clearly, supported by fresh raspberries and a hint of mouthwatering sodium chloride.

Also on the topic of salt, the other bonus to eating at Katzinger's is obviously the pickle barrels. While waiting for my meal, I tried both a dill pickle and the insanely addictive garlic pickle. While garlic pickles are delicious, let me personally recommend that you not kiss anybody you love for at least a month after eating one. It seemingly takes weeks just to sweat out the garlic juice.

My older review of Katzinger's is here, and I have a few other pictures here. Whether it's Restaurant Week or not, Katzinger's Deli is always a treat for the vegetarian-inclined diner.

Katzinger's Restaurant Week