A puck of sour-milk cheese marinated in onion vinaigrette, eaten with dark bread and butter in Frankfurt's apfelwein taverns. The Musik, the music, is the onions, and what they do to you later.
Where to eat it: 4 restaurants across 1 city.
Handkäs is a hand-formed sour-milk cheese from the Hessen countryside, low in fat and high in pungency. Sachsenhausen's taverns made it their standard apfelwein companion by the 19th century, marinating the cheese in vinegar, oil and raw onions, the mixture locals call Musik. Tradition says you eat it with a knife on bread, never a fork, and the caraway on top is a dividing line between families. It survives because it does one job perfectly: it makes the next Schoppen of sharp cider taste sweeter than the last.
Common allergens: Milk
Tip from the editors. The cheese should go glassy and translucent at the rim; if your room is warm, marinate in the fridge and pull it out an hour before eating.
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.
Fichtekränzi has poured apfelwein under a braided spruce wreath on Frankfurt's Wallstraße since 1849, one of Sachsenhausen's oldest tavern rooms.
Signature: Handkäs mit Musik
Order: Handkäs mit Musik with farmhouse bread, then whatever the slate board says
Tip: Cash or EC card only, no credit cards; the courtyard garden is first-come, so arrive before 18:30 in summer.
Zur Buchscheer pours self-pressed apfelwein under garden trees in Frankfurt's quiet south, the tavern locals protect from the crawl routes each night.
Order: The house pressing with Handkäs mit Musik
Why locals love it: It sits in residential Sachsenhausen-Süd, a 15-minute walk from the tavern strip, so tour groups never make it this far.
Tip: Weekday evenings are regulars-only calm; weekends from noon bring Sachsenhausen families for the long lunch.
Lorsbacher Thal treats apfelwein the way a wine bar treats Burgundy, cellaring over 300 bottlings in barrel below its Frankfurt tavern in Sachsenhausen.
Wine focus: An apfelwein cellar list of over 300 entries, aged in barrel
Food: Hessian tavern kitchen without shortcuts
Tip: Order by flight, not Bembel, and let the host sequence the pours from bone dry to barrel-aged rarities.
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