Admittedly, the ulterior motive was already there: to rub it on the Franconian TV and celebrity chef from the small market town of Wirsberg that he has far too little idea about the Oktoberfest. Alexander Herrmann, at home on all sorts of TV channels, got into the cook box business relatively early, unlike others nationwide. Well, with “Surf & Turf” with Chateaubriand and confit prawns you can imagine that, also with the “Heimat” box with salmon trout and sauerbraten, or with the vegan box with “Spicy Pumpkin” and “Asparagus meets hemp” . But now the “Oktoberfest Box”? With a snack board, pork knuckles and Oktoberfest chicken? So please, and that for four to six people – do you really need a star chef from Franconian Switzerland?
So you look forward to the test, together with your colleague from the Wiesn reporter team, because three courses for four to six people are a bit much for one person. A wine-red cardboard box comes with a sturdy styrofoam box with icy cooling elements. When you open it, a (first?) Aberration of taste: the white and blue diamond tablecloth made of paper, plus eight paper napkins, also with a diamond pattern. Yes, that’s how you imagine the Oktoberfest in Söderland, up in Franconia.
And as it is always the case with the cooking boxes, you feel somewhat lost before you turn on the stove. In front of you are a heap of plastic bags which, from a visual point of view, do not whet your appetite. The pieces of chicken, for example, look in the package as if the supplier stayed on them. The packaged ox cheekbones and roast suckling pig knuckles are not much more appetizing. But good: Doesn’t help, so take out the pots, preheat the oven, put the stuff in. While suckling pig and chicken sizzle at the grill level below, the cheeks simmer in the water bath above. In the meantime we enjoy the snack platter as a starter. The previously baked “Bierstangerln” are accompanied by Pfefferbeißer, mountain cheese, an Obatzdn and sausage salad – all of a good quality, if not spectacular. In proper style, we listen to brass music on CD, somehow you have to try to conjure up a Oktoberfest atmosphere in the living room, but then we decided not to wear traditional costumes.
Main course one, the Oktoberfest chicken, is actually a chicken supreme and tender as butter, we haven’t been allowed to taste something like this at the Oktoberfest so far. Main course two, the knuckles, are very soft, if we had grilled them a few minutes longer, the crust would have been crisper too. But well, we’ll know next time. The slices of pretzel dumplings, baked with butter, went very well with the pork as well as with the ox. The sauces inevitably came from the Packerl – but they didn’t taste like Packerlsoss at all. If Alexander Herrmann were somehow unworthy of someone. The Bavarian cabbage was also flawless, but the red cabbage could have done with a little less cinnamon. The dessert, a Strudel Schmarrn with apple and vanilla sauce, was more of a Schmarrn in the figurative sense and was enough for three.
Overall, however, Herrmann’s Oktoberfest box is a pleasant surprise. If you order the box below www.starchefbox.de until Sunday night, then you get it delivered on Friday. The price is proud of 179 euros, but you haven’t drunk anything yet – beer is not included in the scope of delivery. However, at least four people here receive what is commonly called a “decent foundation”, and this is, as is well known, the be-all and end-all of a well-groomed visit to the Oktoberfest.