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By Root 1294 0

of the Baumann chain of brasseries, thought by some to have the best choucroute in the city. It was the most demoralizing meal of a lifetime, not because the choucroute was poor, which it was, nor because my wife forced me to eat outside in the broiling sun and a pigeon soiled my suit, which they did, but because it dawned on me for the first time that an authentic choucroute garnie à l’Alsacienne was not what I was after. The cabbage was tough and acrid and greasy; some of the pork was so amply streaked with soft white fat that it seemed morally wrong to eat more than a bite or two of it; two pieces were so lean and dry that my knife buckled as I tried to cut them. Meals the next day at the Brasserie Flo and at Chez Jenny restored my confidence a bit. I vowed then and there that someday I would voyage to Alsace and uncover the truth.

Whenever I travel to France, I like to hit the ground eating, but my urgency on this trip was even more intense than usual—a brief week in Alsace was barely long enough to sample fourteen authentic choucroutes. I had passed a sleepless night and morning on the trip to Strasbourg—two plane flights and an endless wait for airport connections—while my wife slumbered beside me like a puppy. Anticipating that I would lose consciousness as soon as we rented our car, my instructions to her had been the model of clarity: Drive directly from the airport to Ittenheim on the forlorn outskirts of Strasbourg, avoiding the twofold snare of ineffable scenery and medieval churches. Park at the Hotel-Restaurant au Boeuf and make a reservation for lunch. Enjoy yourself very quietly for the next two hours. Wake me at 1:00 p.m. for our first steaming plate of true choucroute.

Hard as I tried, I could not find a loophole in these instructions. Yet here I was, alone and immobilized, deep in the Vosges Mountains and their adorable little towns of medieval houses, lofty church spires, narrow spotless streets, and ferocious dogs on flimsy tethers.

I fished around in the glove compartment for a dictionary, a long roll of graph paper, and a stack of postcards. In France as in no other country they sell postcards with photographs of regional dishes on one side and recipes on the reverse. I had located five at the Strasbourg airport while my wife, by division of labor, took care of the baggage. Three cards featured choucroute garnie à l’Alsacienne. I sat down on a tree stump and resumed my masterwork—a chart analyzing every authentic recipe for choucroute I could get my hands on.

Just then a shadowy figure emerged from the forest into the bright sunlight. It was my wife, wearing the look she gets when she believes she has been ennobled by proximity to nature. Too proud to betray the slightest concern at her absence, guessing that interrogation would be pointless, and recalling that she still had the car keys, I smiled carelessly, rolled up my chart, and said, “To Ittenheim!”

An hour later we pulled into the courtyard of the Hotel-Restaurant au Boeuf, three stories of white stucco and dark timbers, with pink and red geraniums in every window box, like most of the buildings in the Alsatian countryside. I had chosen Au Boeuf because its choucroute garnie à l’Alsacienne had won the Concours de la Cuisine Régionale in 1985, a competition run by an association of modest French country inns. Alsace has more than its share of superb restaurants displaying international ambitions. But a good choucroute, I felt, was most likely to be found in a family establishment serving convivial fare on well-worn crockery.

After a pleasant interlude with a smooth slab of goose foie gras—another Alsatian specialty—the choucroute was borne to our table. Down the center of an oval terra-cotta platter was a mountain of golden sauerkraut; leaning up against it were nine distinct cuts of pork and charcuterie, and around the outside lay eight yellow potatoes. Four red sausages taller than the others rose to the crest of the mound, where they appeared to support a stout pig’s shank, still in its skin. We heaped the choucroute on our plates and