On Thursday, April 21, 2016, our agenda included Hamburg’s Tschebull in the Levante Haus.
Reservation
The Chebull has sufficient capacity, but you should play it safe and reserve in advance.
Ambience
The Tschebull has a reception desk at which we were welcomed very friendly and courteous & and from there we were led to our table. The guest room is divided into several sections, the restaurant, the bar, the lounge & Beisl (Austrian for guesthouse).
The Tschebull is furnished with love and care and has been well thought out. We found the sometimes rather small distances to other guests as well as the clearly too loud background noise disturbing – something should be changed so that nothing disturbs the culinary experience.
The “Business Card”
Saloon-like ambience at the toilets, these were clean and made a neat, but not noble impression.
Service
The service responsible for our table was very friendly & extremely competent, we felt very quickly & well served, as well as openly & honestly advised.
Starters
In the beginning we were served bread, olive oil and a very mild Obatzter – the bread was a dream, the Obatzter as well.
The marinated Tafelspitz in vegetable vinaigrette with horseradish, radish, potato croutons & small salad was very tasty. I have never had a Tafelspitz prepared in this way before – a really exciting dish – visually and taste wise first class.
Very tasty was also the vegan forest Waldpilz-Knuspersalat with two kinds of celery, Rauchzwiebelconfit & Hollermandl.
The Tafelspitzboullion with semolina dumplings, root vegetables & chives could not convince at all – one had literally the impression that the weak and very thin substance would be pure water – unfortunately a total failure.
Main Course
A colleague chose the stag. The stag’s back on blackberry risotto with Tyrolean raw ham, alpine cheese, Brussels sprouts and orange turnip was something very special both visually and taste-wise.
The rest ordered the Wienerschnitzel vom Kalb – for which Tschebull is known beyond the borders of Hamburg – with potato salad together with a small green salad & homemade Tyrolean cranberry chutney.
The schnitzel should have been much warmer when it reached the table. In addition, all three schnitzels tasted partwise fishy – just as if calamari had previously been prepared in the same pan – according to the waiters this was not the case.
Possibly too many schnitzels in a row went through the same pan or a Surf & Turf event struck across – whatever, that didn’t have to be.
The “warm” potato salad served as standard with the schnitzel was, just like on an earlier visit, clearly too cold, too sour and of a consistency that was not classically tumbleable – rather watery. This was also the reason why two of us preferred to order Rösti instead of the “salad” in advance.
Unfortunately, it has to be mentioned that the schnitzel was very different from the quality we were allowed to enjoy in Tschebull half a year earlier – and not in a positive way.
A brief comment on the cranberry chutney: Much too strong, inappropriate for the schnitzel…from our point of view clearly too much “Christmas flavour” – literally over spiced, which was also confirmed by our colleague with the otherwise perfect stag back.
Desserts
Two of us got involved with the Homemade Sachertorte 2010 delight of Valhrona chocolate & apricot. According to feedback not only visually, but also tastefully successful.
Unfortunately, the guest room was filled with a strong smell of fish while eating the dessert – which finally led to our premature farewell.
Conclusion
The Tschebull is easy to reach both by car (sufficient parking spaces in the surrounding area) and by public transport. The location at the Mönckebergstraße invites you for dinner after a shopping tour.
Our experiences with the Tschebull are unfortunately from visit to visit very different – but what was always disturbing was the immense background noise and the sometimes much too narrow tables – you almost feel like at a speed dating.
If we assume a higher quality “material use” we have nothing to complain about in terms of price.
But we don’t want to make a clear recommendation because of the experiences we made in the end – if you still want to try it – good luck.