Münchner Weißwurst Frühstück

At Zum Franziskaner on Residenzstraße, the usual Weißwurst breakfast comes as a small covered pot of steaming water with two pale sausages lying in it, a basket of Brezn, and a ramekin of süßer Senf. Lift the lid and the steam smells of parsley and lemon and warm veal fat, a gentle smell. The sausages sit there uncolored because they were never browned: they were poached just long enough to set and then held below a simmer, so the casing stays whole and the filling stays almost custardy. A cook who lets the water boil splits the skins and leaves grey, leaking sausages, which is why the pot is kept hot and not furious.

The sandwich happens at the table, in a few quick moves that Munich diners make without thinking. A Brezn is torn open along its soft belly, where the dark lye-baked crust gives way to a chewy, salty crumb. Mustard goes on in a thick stripe, and the sausage, slid out of its casing with a knife or a fingertip, is laid into the pretzel and eaten in bites. The mustard is the bind: it is coarse, malty and sweet, and it lifts the faintly lemony, herbal flavor of the veal. The pretzel's salt and its resistant chew answer a sausage so soft that it would otherwise vanish in the mouth.

Plenty of diners skip the knife and zuzeln, a Bavarian verb for sucking the filling out through a slit in the skin, which leaves a collapsed casing on the plate and a lot of mustard on the fingers. Either way the meal is eaten warm and in a hurry, because a Weißwurst that cools in its water goes pasty and tight. The first bite is soft and mildly sweet, then the Brezn pushes back with salt, and a swallow of Weißbier clears it all with a yeasty, clove-like sharpness. A table of regulars will order a second pair of sausages before the first pot is empty, and the waiter swaps in a fresh pot of hot water without being asked.

The hours are part of the dish. The old Munich saying holds that a Weißwurst should not hear the noon bells, a rule from the years before refrigeration that survives as habit; some Munich kitchens still stop serving the sausage around midday, and others sell it later. At a place the size of Zum Franziskaner the breakfast belongs to the late morning, when the tables fill with office workers, shoppers from the Residenz quarter and visitors who have been told to try it once. The house also sells its own mustard, a sign of how central the pairing is to the room.

The Brezn deserves its own attention. Bavarian bakers dip the shaped dough in a lye bath before baking, which turns the crust mahogany and gives it the faintly alkaline smell that fills a Munich bakery at six in the morning. Cut through it and the knife catches on the crust, then slides through a damp, springy crumb that soaks up mustard without collapsing. Coarse salt crystals ride along on every bite and land on the sausage, which needs them. The Weißbier in the tall glass supplies the rest: banana and clove on the nose, a fizz that scrubs the fat from the tongue, and a cloudy body that holds its own against the sweetness of the mustard.

Origin and history

The breakfast has no recorded inventor and no dated first menu. The habit of eating it with a Brezn and sweet mustard, in the late morning, grew up around the sausage as a custom among Munich innkeepers, butchers and regulars, with no single moment that anyone has pinned down.

What can be dated is the room that serves it here. Zum Franziskaner has stood on Residenzstraße 9 as a Gaststätte run by the Reinbold family since 1966, and its kitchen has made Weißwurst its signature, along with its own Franziskaner mustard that guests can take home. Another well-known Munich address, the Weisses Bräuhaus im Tal, serves a similar morning plate with its Schneider wheat beer, which shows the format is shared across the Altstadt and belongs to no one house.

The detail worth remembering at Zum Franziskaner is the pot of hot water on the table. The sausages are kept in hot water rather than on a plate, the usual Munich way, so the first bite arrives warm and the last one, taken when the Brezn is half gone, is still warm enough to taste of parsley and lemon. A table that arrives at ten and orders two pairs sits through the whole thing in steam, with the mustard crock emptying slowly between plates, and the Reinbold family has run that room since 1966.