OZU /GERMANY /FRANKFURT /GUIDE
Where to eat in Frankfurt
5 stopsUpdated July 2026
Apple cider from a stoneware jug, green sauce with exactly seven herbs, hand cheese with onion: the food here is odd, very specific, and you won’t find it anywhere else. Nearly all of it is tavern food, nearly all of it is eaten cold, and almost none of it tries to please you first time. This is a merchants’ city and it shows even on the menu.
And the geography is surprising. Frankfurt’s good food isn’t in the old town, which lives off the layover crowd, but in two places: the cider taverns of Sachsenhausen and, above all, the station quarter. Four blocks of bad reputation where the best cooking in the city happens.
The route, stop by stop
5 STOPS- 01
Apfelwein, and why the glass is ribbed
Frankfurt drinks apple cider, not beer: Apfelwein in German, Ebbelwoi in the local dialect. You order it by the jug, and the jug has a name, Bembel, and it’s grey stoneware with a blue pattern. The glass has a name too, Geripptes, and it’s cut with diamonds on the outside.
The ribbing has a practical explanation, not an aesthetic one: in a tavern you eat with your hands, your hands get greasy and a smooth glass slides out of them. A diamond-cut one doesn’t. That’s the whole thing.
The cider is dry and sour and almost nobody likes it first time, you can cut it with sparkling water or lemonade, which is what half the table will do, but try it neat before you decide.
- 02
Grüne Soße and its seven herbs
Green sauce stands for Frankfurt and takes exactly seven herbs: borage, sorrel, cress, chervil, chives, parsley and salad burnet. Not six, not eight, and not any old ones: markets sell the bundle ready-made with all seven, wrapped in paper, and the person selling it to you knows perfectly well that if one is missing it doesn’t count.
They’re chopped, mixed with sour cream and served cold over boiled egg and boiled potato. It sounds like very little and it is. The point is that it’s a spring recipe tied to the herb season, and the city treats it as its own to the extent of having a festival for it.
Goethe, they’ll tell you here, had it for breakfast. It runs from April into autumn and outside that window what you’re served is something else.
- 03
Handkäs mit Musik
A small round translucent cheese, made by hand, hence the name, served marinated in vinegar, oil and chopped onion, with bread and butter on the side. The onion is the “music”, and the joke, which Frankfurt tells you with a straight face, is that the music doesn’t play at the table but a few hours later.
It smells strong, tastes strong, and it’s the natural partner to Apfelwein: the vinegar and the sour cider understand each other. It’s what you order in a Sachsenhausen tavern at seven in the evening while you make your mind up about dinner.
And here’s the test of a serious place: a serious one serves it without asking if you’re sure.
- 04
The Kleinmarkthalle
Two streets from the Römerberg, the covered market is where locals confirm the city still works: a hundred-odd stalls over two floors, butchers, cheese, spices, vegetables, and an upper level where you eat standing with a glass of wine watching the traffic below.
The ritual is mid-morning rather than lunchtime, which throws everyone arriving from southern Europe: by one it’s winding down and by the afternoon it’s shut. Sundays it doesn’t open, like everything.
If you only have a moment to eat in Frankfurt and don’t fancy the cider liturgy, this is the place: four things standing up and you walk on.
- 05
The Bahnhofsviertel: best food, worst quarter
What Frankfurt actually eats now runs through here. The station quarter has a red-light district, a visible drug scene and the bank towers a hundred metres away, and in the middle of all that sit the restaurants people travel in for: Korean, Japanese counters, Ethiopian, Portuguese, south Indian.
It’s the most foreign-born quarter of what is already Germany’s most foreign-born city.
The logic is the usual one: it’s where the rent was cheap and where everyone who turned up with a recipe and no money ended up. You eat wonderfully and you walk the main streets without trouble. What you do is what you’d do at any big European station: stay out of the alleys at night and don’t walk along looking at your phone.
Frequently asked
What should you eat in Frankfurt?
Apfelwein, the apple cider ordered by the stoneware jug, Grüne Soße, the cold sauce of exactly seven herbs over egg and potato, and Handkäs mit Musik, the marinated cheese with onion. All three are tavern food and none of them exists outside this region.
What is Frankfurt’s Grüne Soße?
A cold sour-cream sauce with exactly seven herbs (borage, sorrel, cress, chervil, chives, parsley and salad burnet) served over boiled egg and potato. Markets sell the bundle with all seven ready-made, and it’s a spring and summer dish.
Where do you eat best in Frankfurt?
In the Bahnhofsviertel, the station quarter, despite its reputation: that’s where the restaurants people travel in for are. For the traditional stuff, the cider taverns of Sachsenhausen. For something quick and standing up, the Kleinmarkthalle mid-morning.