I will be transiting Frankfurt next week. I want to get a good German breakfast with extra pork. Money is no object.
You would think a travel site would have some sort of advice on this. Perhaps my Google-foo is weak.
Any thoughts?
What sort of pork breakfast are you expecting? A traditional German breakfast is usually bread rolls, butter, and jam. Maybe cheese and cold cuts too. It’s not like a full English breakfast with fried meat (though those are becoming increasingly popular).
When you say you’re “transiting”, do you mean exclusively by air? If so, what terminal are you using, and will you be leaving the international departures area? If not, that’s going to severely limit your breakfast options. Not that Frankfurt Airport has a huge variety of restaurants serving breakfast anyway.
I will be transiting, both flights in Terminal One. I am willing to leave the security area if need be.
Traditional or not, I am looking for bacon and sausage. In fact I am perfectly willing to have a jagersnitzel and apple wine for breakfast.
I use Frankfurt Airport several times a year, but I live close by (about 20 minutes) so I rarely have the need to eat there. There actually aren’t too many German restaurants there, and the only place that looks consistently appealing to me is a deli (I think it’s Caviar House Prunier in departure area B) that sells pâté de foie gras sandwiches for €30. That’s a bit out of my price range for a sandwich, but I’ve always been tempted to try anyway.
Anyway, the airport’s website has maps of all the restaurants. Many of the restaurants have their own websites that have menus, though unfortunately they’re not hyperlinked from the map, so you may be in for some Googling.
I know there’s a German restaurant on the upper level called Kuffler & Bucher but I don’t remember ever eating there myself. Their website has a menu (click on “Speisekarte”) with lots of German pork specialties. They’re open from early in the morning, but I don’t know if you can order off their lunch/dinner menu then. You can always call them in advance and ask; since they’re in an airport they’re sure to speak English.
Oh, and as for what to order, I would recommend the Weißwurst if you haven’t already tried it. This is a thick white veal sausage that is commonly eaten for early lunch in southern Germany (Frankfurt being near the fuzzy border between north and south) but virtually unknown elsewhere. It’s usually brought to your table in a tureen of stock, and served with sweet Bavarian mustard and a thick, doughy pretzel. Learning how to get the sausage out of its thick, inedible casing can be a bit of a challenge, and everyone ends up developing his or her own technique.
I see that Kuffler & Bucher serve it.
Moved from GQ to IMHO.
Weisswurst is also what I would recommend if you want a pork German breakfast experience (well, veal and pork). Plus you can order a weizenbier with it, and not look like an alcoholic. 
I went through Frankfurt recently. The airport is very much a massive shopping mall, but with planes. Didn’t stop to eat, though.
Not sure how useful this might be, but …
Some time ago I spent the night in a hotel connected to the Frankfurt Airport. I recall the room as normal, the price as borderline painful, and the included breakfast as very good. Assuming things are still this way, this might be an option for someone with enough time to walk a bit and not sensitive to cost.
Thank you all.
I have been there a few times, early in the morning, and that looks like a good choice. I am sure you can order all the dishes you want in the morning; I remember eating warm sausage for breakfast and seeing some people having beer.
They have two sections there: a self-service at the entrance and then a regular restaurant on the back, next to the windows.
It is a nice but not overly fancy place, good-level-airport-restaurant type, with good and friendly service as far as I remember.
Be careful that you know where to find it: it is not in the big departure area with all the gates and shops but rather somewhere on the way just after a checkpoint; can’t remember exactly where. There tends to be multiple checkpoints at Frankfurt airport so it is not always trivial whether you’ll have to pass another one on the way to your gate, I suggest you ask them in case you are short on time.
This was also my experience in Germany Three weeks in Bavaria. Average 3 nights at small hotels, traveling by train.
The train stations had a lot of bread and cold cuts for breakfast. Food on the go for commuters. Even the hotels always had cold cuts, cheese and bread for breakfast. You could get something more familiar, but having an egg (ei) was a special order.
Just don’t be like the person I walked past at Frankfurt am Main airport. They had a lot of luggage and were looking a bit stressed and were standing at an information desk near the entrance to the large airport railway station. The info person was looking at their tickets and explaining carefully, “There are 2 Frankfurts in Germany…”
You’d think this would happen more often at Frankfurt an der Oder but I suppose every so often someone will go to Frankfurt am Main by mistake.
Actually they were probably at the right place but they’d booked tickets leaving from the wrong Frankfurt.
I wanted to give you a heads-up that Frankfurt is one of the worst airports for transfers in my experience. The amount of time required to get through the next round of security and to my gate put me minutes away from missing my flights through there recently-- on a 2.5 hour layover and a 3 hour layover! It is still not clear to me why- understaffed customs? understaffed security? extra security check for boarding a U.S. flight? and probably all three.
So I recommend that you are close to your gate before you settle in for breakfast.
#and I’m a good traveler- I just did a 70 minute transfer at De Gaulle in which I had to go through customs and transfer terminals before going back through security on another airline.
Frankfurt (FRA) is my usual transit airport. This is my usual commute. Still, that means I am there just four times a year. I sort of suspect I have never mastered it.
I’ll never forget in a small hotel in Rothenburg ob der Tauber the innkeeper said I can make eggs if you like.
A man (American, as am I) asked “you would cook some eggs?” The innkeeper said “I might”. It was really just a different sense of humor. I thought it quite funny.
Pro-tip. Stay away from the sauerkraut. If you like it in the US, it’s not the same. It’s sweet mush at least in southern Germany. And schnapps. The real stuff, at least what I had, tasted like vodka mixed with old motor oil. Perhaps it was a joke played on me.
Do enjoy some beers while in Germany. They are VERY serious about their beer.
Never having had American sauerkraut or schnapps, maybe you could tell me what it is you were expecting? “Sweet mush” and “vodka mixed with old motor oil” seem pretty accurate descriptors of what you get over here, so I’m wondering how they’re done elsewhere.
I assume enipla, you’re talking about the clear fruit brandy type of schnapps, given your description? Yeah, that can take a little getting used to (though I took to it right away–I guess it’s my Eastern European genes.) Basically, it’s a clear, unaged brandy that is distilled from fruit, and the resulting drink is like vodka flavored with the essence of the fruit(s) it’s made from, but with none of the sweetness. For those who have had kirschwasser, slivovitz, or grappa (which is made from grape stems instead of fruit), it’s basically that idea, except can be applied to other fruit like apples, pears (William pear especially), apricots, cherries, etc. (And slivovitz is the same type of drink specifically made with plums, usually Damson plums.)
But the term “schnapps” can cover a lot of ground, including spirits that are macerations, herbal infusions, etc., and not just pure distillates.
I’m interested as well about the sauerkraut, because sauerkraut certainly seems “mushy” to me in America. Plus it doesn’t taste particularly unsweet to me, simply fairly sour. It tastes like if you remove the sourness it would have a small but non-zero amount of sugar in it, while still being less sweet than your average fruit.