Germany’s Black Forest is one of the most enchanting and awesome places on earth. Less than two hours from the vineyards and wine towns of Alsace, it is a world unto itself -- a world of deeply-pitched hills and valleys, where cuckoo clocks, majestic trees and gingerbread houses share the landscape with some of the best food Germany  has to offer. Smack in the middle of Baiersbronn (its culinary capital), lies the Traube Tonbach, a luxurious resort where well-heeled Germans have come to relax be pampered for over two hundred years.
    There's a lot to do at the Traube Tonbach. Spas, swimming (indoors and out), skiing, hiking, exploring the picturesque valleys and towns of Baiersbronn, all while taking in some of the crispest, cleanest, pine-scented air in Europe.  If you're the shut-in type, you'll find nothing to complain about either. The 153 rooms are enormous, the bathrooms even more so, and it seems everywhere you look (out of giant, wood-trimmed windows) you see one stunning forest view after another.
    Calling the Traube enchanting is an understatement. From the traditional Tyrolean garb of the crackerjack staff to the oversized, Black Forest décor, everything about it has a formal-yet-friendly precision that seduces you from the moment you sink into an overstuffed chair or start sipping a glass of crisp Riesling. You can be as laid back or active as you wish at the Traube Tonbach, but what you really ought to be doing is eating.
    Harald Wohlfahrt's Schwardwaldstube has held three Michelin stars since 1992. The name means "Black Forest Room" (below, left) and the thickness of the wood, the chairs and the linens give not a clue as to the lightness and freshness of his cuisine. The room seats only 40 customers, but so precise is the food, you get the feeling that there are at least that many cooks in the kitchen.  Chef Wohlfahrt told me (through an interpreter) that his cuisine has become more international over the years, and, like most chefs in this league, he now plays with flavors from all around the globe. Some might fault him for letting these flights of foreign fancy overtake him, such as when he accompanies beautiful poached Gillardeau oysters with ponzu jelly, shredded beetroot and horseradish, plus a chive vinaigrette, but for me everything harmonized the way it's supposed to with highfalutin fusion food. What Wohlfahrt's elemental, not-bashful cooking proved was that I was in a bigger, bolder, German version of a French restaurant, not a dainty Gallic one.
    "Not bashful" would be my same description of the Swabia-meets-Bologna construct of Wohlfahrt's ravioli (below) . Stuffed with a moist, dense confit of calf’s head and garnished with sweetbreads and tongue, it was elegant and earthy, not an easy feat in any cuisine. Festooned with truffles, it was part French, part Italian, and definitely German, acknowledging all three cuisines without surrendering to the heaviness of its pedigree.
    
 From there, our meal proceeded seamlessly through meaty slices of wild turbot in an intense, sea urchin nage, through local "homegrown" venison in a juniper sauce that tasted of a hunter's bounty. This is cold weather, nip-in-the-air eating at its finest, I thought to myself —food that matched the evergreen forest surroundings as much as the heavy, carved wood upon which we sat.
     As wonderful, and of-its-place as our game and fish repast was, it was my wife’s vegetarian meal where the kitchen really proved its mettle. Six courses of jaw-dropping variety even more stunning than the proteins:  a variation of carrots in a black tea emulsion, grilled pineapple and confit of fennel in a Ricard Pernod/passion fruit stock;  potato-mushroom ravioli with caper jus and chanterelles—dishes that could make you forget about meat altogether. As with my meal, every vegetable course was a show stopper, but the highlight was an egg white soufflé encasing a reinserted yolk with a white truffle sauce so intense I had to check my pulse.
    About the only clinkers in the meal were the desserts, which seemed terribly overwrought, as if the pastry chef was trying too hard to keep up with the pirouettes taking place on the savory plates. There was also a serious service lapse towards the last quarter of the meal, when everything seemed to slow to a crawl.
    As for wine, the list is extensive (750+ labels, 36,000 bottles) and shoulder deep in great German and Alsatian Rieslings.  Markups were more than fair—especially compared with New York and Las Vegas—with scores of great bottles for $100 or less. My rule of thumb when star-grazing in Europe is to look for bottles in the $50-$100 range, and I'm consistently amazed by the quality at those prices. I took the wine pairing with my meal, and it, along with our young sommelier, was superb.
    The Schwarzwaldstube would be a fitting crescendo to anyone's visit to the Traube, but we worked in reverse order for our two-day stay. Dinner number two found us again across the street from the main hotel, at the original, heavily timbered inn that now houses a traditional restaurant, the Bauernstube (left).  Those timbers, low ceilings, plaster walls and wooden benches give the Bauernstube a distinctly 18th century feel, but this being the Traube, the linens are as thick and crisp and the and the food at the Bauernstube is every bit as formidable (if not as refined) as you would expect southwestern German food to be, while  still keeping its casual charm. The restaurants share the same wine list.
    Being strangers to Swabian cuisine, we didn't know quite what to expect, although we suspected that the six-mile hike we took earlier in the day was probably a good idea. As with all traditional German restaurants, the difficulties of the language will surprise you with a disconnect between what was described, what you thought you ordered, and what shows up. For example: three fist-sized stuffed ravioli (below) are described as a "snack" on the English menu, but what appears could fill up a sumo wrestler. (In a similar vein, an American chef told me he once ordered a plate of butter as an appetizer in a German restaurant.)
    Undaunted by our "snack," we sallied forth with the rest of our meal and found everything to be as enjoyable as a meal can be—golf ball-size sweetbreads and wide noodles, used to "garnish" a perfect blanquette de veau, no less ($24);  tennis-ball sized liver dumplings ($19.50) and brook trout ($24.50), which tasted as if it had jumped right from the stream onto our plate. Filling or not, those dumplings, veal and sweetbreads are dishes I'm still dreaming about. There is also a $35 fixed price menu available.
    My parents told me decades ago about the wonders of German breakfast buffets in upscale hotels, but it wasn't until I forced myself into an early awakening one morning that I saw for myself what they meant.
    "Get here early," one of the staff told me, and so I did, bleary-eyed and still wrestling with my weightlifter's repast of the night before.  What I confronted was more temptation than any one man should face while he's still digesting Swabian dumplings. Every bread and pastry imaginable, right out of the oven. Miles of meats, cheeses, fruits, jams, and jellies. Scores of butters and spreads. Eight kinds of milk. A dozen fresh-squeezed juices. Every kind of smoked fish you've ever heard of and more sausages than you could shake a stick at (left). Carved beef, cured ham (four kinds!), smoked ham, eggs out the wazoo and half a dozen local honeys. Aged cheeses from all over Europe, and did I mention the pastries and meats?
    Everything from the coffee to the headcheese was exemplary, and the finest of its kind of any buffet I've ever been to. It was so good it restored my faith in overeating.
    My parents were right; the Germans do breakfast better than anyone. Their hotels and 3-star restaurants concede nothing to the French, either, with everything correct down to the last detail. Michelin is right too, at least in this case: this magical place is definitely worth a special journey.

Our dinner for (two tasting menus + one wine pairing) at the Schwarzwaldstube came to $465, including a generous tip. (Yes, they tip in Germany, usually around 10%.) The Bauernstube dinner was $110.

PINTO GARDEN

    Thai restaurants in America have generally followed the same formulas as have most other Asian restaurants since the 1980s, creating menus with a huge amalgam of dishes in myriad variations that have become safe, sure winners with the American dining public.  Thai dishes like mee krob, tom yum soup, pad Thai and an array of curries (beef, shrimp, chicken or duck) are as ubiquitous as General Tso’s chicken, moo shu pork and orange beef are on Chinese menus and mulligatawny soup, samosas and tikki kabobs are on Indian.
    Pinto Garden is one of a few emerging Thai restaurants in NYC’s five boroughs (Staten Island perhaps exempted) that have deliberately broken from the clichés, both in cuisine and décor.  Chef Teerawong Nanthavatsiri, nicknamed Yo, originally opened Pinto Garden on Christopher Street, then one in Brooklyn Heights, and two months ago he moved the first location to a West Village storefront where he features regional Thai cuisine of a kind he grew up with in Bangkok. Having trained to be an actor, Yo switched from stage to kitchen, seeing parallels: “I like to imagine I’m the director looking into the culinary world to create a show. Chefs, like actors, have to train for their roles. Every day is a rehearsal and when it’s time for dinner service, it’s my time to perform.”
    Yo has also avoided the trite décor of typical Thai restaurants, instead creating a small brick-walled dining room with a garden out back that seats 30. It is as cozy as a country inn, with its bentwood chairs, wooden benches, wainscoting and fireplace. Images of rabbits honor Yo’s mother and the late Thailand King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who were both born in the Year of the Rabbit.  There is also a very popular communal table down the center of the room.
    Again, in contrast to Thai menus that seem never to end (I count more than 150 dishes on the menu at the highly praised Queens restaurant SriPraPhai), Pinto Garden’s is admirably  reduced to less than 20 dishes wholly dependent on what Yo, with Chef de Cuisine Tong Rattanun, finds best in the market, all of it meant to be enjoyed family style, with replenished pots of sweet sticky rice.  You won’t find those chili pepper icons next to dishes to indicate hotness, and while some of Yo’s food is indeed hot, chilies never overpower the fragrance of the spices used or the sweet balm of coconut milk.  You may, however, ask that the milder dishes be served first, so as to build towards a higher level of spice and heat.
     “KO-RAE” marinated then fried chicken ($10) is a dish from the South, where red turmeric and plenty of chilies and honey are used in the cooking, both evident in this wonderfully crisp, crunchy, peppery chicken.  Koi Neur ($16) is a dish from the Northeast, where raw meat is much appreciated, so Pinto Garden’s version is a lustrous filet mignon tartare topped with a quail egg and dressed in mint, kaffir, shallots, spicy lime and fish sauce—such a delightful departure from the usual steak tartare around town.
    There are six rice and noodle dishes available , including pad Thai with oysters ($16), and a delicious and complex jumbo crab fried rice with young coconut tossed  very quickly in a wok and served with egg and jasmine rice ($21).  Num Ya Pu ($19) is a pasta with more jumbo crab meat and southern Thai curry that packs a wonderful wallop.
    Among the larger plates, which tend to be the milder ones, I enjoyed lamb masamun ($21), the meat long braised with curry spices, fingerling potatoes, sweet pearl onions, roasted carrots and crunchy peanuts.  All the elements of the Thai kitchen come together is lusty green curry short ribs ($22), whose meat pulls easily from the bone (above), perfect with sticky rice. Similar in style are the Kau-Kling Berkshire baby back ribs ($20) slowly cooked with southern Thai herbs.  The mildest of the dishes I tried was pan-roasted duck breast (above) with a pineapple curry ($25), a rendering that would not be out of place on an American kitchen table.
    The wine list is serviceable, little more, and there are Thai beers available, but not cocktails.
    The warmth of the reception by a comely hostess is carried through the evening by General Manager Koby Songyoo, who is eager to answer any questions you may have about the marvelous cuisine.  If I lived in the neighborhood, Pinto Garden would be my go-to place for dinner at least once a week. And on the other nights, I might do take-out from Pinto Garden.  It really is that alluring.

Open nightly for dinner.