Hildegard’s has served authentic German cuisine in Alabama for two decades
Amy Miller is owner of Hildegard's German Cuisine in Huntsville. (Michael Tomberlin / Alabama News Center)
Regional food is a global phenomenon. And in our increasingly multicultural state, global foods show up regionally. Take, for instance, the delicious Korean food found in Montgomery and our great “Greek and threes” in Birmingham and the authentic Vietnamese food in Bayou La Batre.
The same is true in Huntsville, where lasting German influences from the early days of Redstone Arsenal make this city one of the few places in Alabama you can go for authentic German dishes. Those who know, go to Hildegard’s German Cuisine – a restaurant that started with shared culture at the table.
Hildegard Collins immigrated from Germany to work at Redstone Arsenal after World War II. (The German influx, which included rocket scientists who had surrendered to the Americans at the end of the war, was part of Wernher von Braun’s space program, which would change the face of this city.) Other German women had come to Huntsville, too, and they and Hildegard made homemade German meals to share on the weekends.
After she retired from Redstone, Hildegard opened a small cafe serving salads and sandwiches during the week and traditional German dinners on Sundays. In 2009, she sold the place to her daughter, Sabine, who expanded the kitchen and made it into a full-service German restaurant.
In 2016, Sabine catered an Oktoberfest gathering at Amy Miller’s home. Amy said, “I had just moved here, and my husband and I wanted to do something kind of cool to meet the neighbors.” The two women started talking. Amy had worked in food service since she was 14 and dreamed of owning her own place. Sabine was struggling to run Hildegard’s and another restaurant she owned across town. Amy offered to help run Hildegard’s, but Sabine wanted to sell it. So, Amy became the owner of a German restaurant.
While she didn’t set out to do this, it made sense; her father is German, so she had more than a passing understanding of German culture and food. Besides, she’s serving Bavarian-style German cuisine. Bavaria is very similar to the American South, especially in terms of hospitality.
“German food is actually comfort food,” Amy said. “It’s actually considered to be a very simple dish. The schnitzels are chicken-fried chicken, basically – chicken-fried veal, chicken-fried pork.” The meats are hand-cut, pounded out, breaded up and pan fried. “Then we have different sauces. We have a Rahm sauce, which is a cream-based sauce with mushrooms. We’ve got a Jaeger gravy, which is a rich brown sauce with mushrooms and onions, and we have some different types of schnitzels. So, we’ll do a Bavarian, which is stuffed with delicious cheese and mushrooms and onions. It’s one of the most popular dishes here. We do a couple of chicken Cordon Bleus. We do a couple of veal Cordon Bleus. German food is very simple, and it’s very accessible to pretty much everybody.”
The restaurant is also accessible; it’s a cozy space, simply decorated with vintage beer steins, old maps of Germany, pictures of traditional Bavarian towns, colorful German folk art and fresh flowers. A small bar has lots of German beer (Hofbräu Dunkel, Bitburger Pilsner, König Ludwig Weissbier, Reissdorf Kölsch and more) in bottles and on tap. There’s a small enclosed patio out front.
The scratch-made dishes on the menu combine Hildegard’s family recipes with those from a cookbook of Amy’s “oma” (grandmother).
“They are the classic (Hildegard’s) dishes but with just a little bit of a twist,” Amy said, “and that’s only because German food, in general, can be fairly bland. They don’t use a whole lot of seasonings necessarily, but the American palate kind of demands salt, it kind of demands garlic … that’s the type of flavors that folks are looking for. We wanted to develop that fusion so that you could get the German-food experience, but it’ll still be the type of seasoning that you’re going to be looking for.” An example: The chicken Cordon Bleu is made with smoked Gouda (instead of the usual Swiss cheese) and traditional Black Forest ham. “I always recommend a side of honey mustard; it’s absolutely delicious with that,” Amy said.
“We’ve added things over the years,” she said. “One of our most popular dishes right now is called Geschnetzeltes; I call it ‘hunter’s stroganoff,’ because, again, it’s one of those circumstances where people will read that and be like, ‘Nope, not trying it.’ But basically, it is a stroganoff. It’s cubed pork with mushrooms and onions. We brine it, and we put a cream sauce on it.” This is Amy’s personal favorite dish. “I think it’s the brining of the pork that makes it,” she said, “because it’s just so tender. And then the onions, the mushrooms, the cream sauce, they all just work together. We put it over the house-made spätzle. My cook does a really fantastic job with it. We do it all small batch.”
Hildegard’s also has Käsespätzle – four-cheese spätzle with fried onions. “That was another dish one of my servers recommended,” Amy said, “and so we kind of tweaked it, played around with it. And that’s huge. That is one of the most popular side dishes here.”
Lots of the staff here have been with Amy for years, and they are as committed to excellence as she is.
They boil, peel, fry and mash over 700 pounds of potatoes, and hand-trim almost as many pounds of pork, chicken and veal every week. Schnitzels are hand-pounded. Gravies, sauces, soups and dressings are made from scratch every day. All the desserts are homemade, too, and they are many.
“We’ve got the traditional Black Forest cake,” Amy said. “We’ve got the traditional German chocolate cake. We’ve got a coconut layer cake. We’ve got a lemon and sweet cream cake. We’ve got a white chocolate raspberry cake. We’ve got blueberry cheesecake, Nutella cheesecake, peanut butter cheesecake and apple strudel.”
The menu features imported sausages (bratwurst, bier bratwurst, wienerwurst, currywurst and more) and Laugenbrezel (traditional Bavarian-style soft pretzels) and a large selection of German wines.
“We’ve got a really nice beer selection,” Amy added. “That’s another thing that brings people in – not only because they can’t find it any place else, but they can purchase it and take it home.” Being one of the few restaurants in the area with an off-premises license means “people can come in to get their food, grab a six-pack, go home and enjoy.”
Hildegard’s is consistently at the top of Trip Advisor’s list of Huntsville restaurants (currently #2 out of 694 with a Traveler’s Choice designation this year). Recommendations come from visitors and locals alike. That’s because the level of service matches the standards the kitchen sets with the food.
“I’ve got a great staff that is very interested in making sure that every guest in here has a great experience,” Amy said.
“I would have to say the thing we do best is service. We’ve got a lot of long-term customers. I’ve got long-term servers. … One of my servers worked for Hildegard. … They remember everybody; they remember, ‘Oh, they like their gravy on the side.’ And ‘Oh, I’m going to make them a little grilled chicken to take home to their dog.’ Little things like that. So, that keeps people coming back.”
Lauren Weedon decorates a coconut cake, one of many desserts she makes for Hildegard’s German Cuisine in Huntsville. (Susan Swagler / Alabama News Center)
Amy said the restaurant’s longevity and success are a group effort.
“I personally cannot take credit for that. It’s a team effort. As I tell the staff all the time, ‘I don’t do anything here but cut the checks and make sure you have what you need. You are the executors, you are the face, you have the authority to take a meal off the check if it wasn’t up to standard, give a piece of cake away if you think that that would be helpful. … I think that elevated level of hospitality has been something that has served us well, and it is something that I’m very proud of.
“It is a day-by-day process. My goal is to make sure that we always have consistent quality, that we always have consistent high-quality service, and that we maintain the Hildegard’s legacy. It’s important. (The restaurant) is a community staple here, particularly in this little area, and I think that, with a lot of the mom-and-pop businesses struggling and/or going under, it is a worthwhile challenge to make sure that we can stay and that we can serve.”
Amy said she asks herself every day: “’What are we going to do to make it special today?’ And every day we find something to make it special. So, it just works.”
Hildegard’s German Cuisine has operated in Huntsville for 20 years. (Michael Tomberlin / Alabama News Center)
Hildegard’s German Cuisine
2357 Whitesburg Drive SE
Huntsville, AL 35801
https://hildegardsgermancuisine.com/
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Hours:
Tuesday through Saturday 3:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Susan Swagler has written about food and restaurants for more than three decades, much of that time as a trusted restaurant critic. She shares food, books, travel and more at www.savor.blog. Susan is a founding member and past president of the Birmingham chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier International, a philanthropic organization of women leaders in food, wine and hospitality whose members are among Birmingham’s top women in food
