Frankfurt's cold green sauce blends exactly seven herbs with soured cream, poured over halved boiled eggs and potatoes. It is a main course here, not a condiment, and the city argues about every family's ratio.
Where to eat it: 4 restaurants across 1 city.
Grüne Soße belongs to Frankfurt the way pesto belongs to Genoa. The canonical seven herbs are borage, sorrel, garden cress, chervil, chives, parsley and salad burnet, most of them grown in the Oberrad district, which styles itself the city's herb garden. Legend ties the sauce to Goethe's mother, and the city now stages a week-long Grüne Soße Festival each May where restaurant versions compete on the Roßmarkt. Season traditionally opens around Maundy Thursday, when the first bundled herb packets appear at the markets.
Common allergens: Egg, Milk
Tip from the editors. Never blend the herbs smooth; the sauce should be speckled and rough. Missing burnet or borage is forgivable, dried herbs are not.
Apfelwein Wagner proves Frankfurt tradition is a budget cuisine: Handkäs at €5.10 and Rippchen with kraut under €15 on Schweizer Strasse every day.
Try: Handkäs mit Musik at €5.10, Grüne Soße at €14.50
Tip: Order Handkäs and a Schoppen for the cheapest authentic Frankfurt dinner going; bread comes with it, and nobody hurries you out.
Gasthaus Zur Sonne has stood at the top of Frankfurt's Berger Straße for over 250 years, a half-timbered Bornheim tavern with a big chestnut garden.
Signature: Handkäs mit Musik, Frankfurter Schnitzel
Order: Frankfurter Schnitzel with the seven-herb Grie Soß, then Apfelstrudel
Tip: The courtyard behind the half-timbered house is Bornheim's best summer room; the heated barn takes over in winter.
Edel's stand in the Kleinmarkthalle is where Frankfurt office workers eat Grüne Soße standing up, hidden in the sausage queue's shadow at midday.
Order: Grüne Soße with halved eggs and potatoes, market-stand style
Why locals love it: Tourists queue for the sausage stand and never notice the Hausmannskost counter ladling Grüne Soße a few rows over.
Tip: Go at 11:30 before the office rush; the pots are finite and Saturday afternoons run dry early.
Zum Gemalten Haus pours apfelwein in Geripptes under painted murals on Schweizer Strasse in Frankfurt, a Sachsenhausen tavern running since 1936.
Signature: Rippchen mit Kraut, Grüne Soße
Order: Rippchen with sauerkraut and the house Grüne Soße
Tip: Two doors from Wagner, so compare Bembel pours in one evening; the murals inside date to the founding family.
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