DINING OUT: Swan Market
Rochester’s only German restaurant is a meat-lover’s paradise
By Jacob Pucci
Swan Market
231 Parsells Ave., Rochester, NY, 14609 | 585-288-5320
Lunch served Wednesday to Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Retail store open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday to Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday.
The hardest table to score in Rochester isn’t at a fancy steakhouse or fine dining restaurant — it’s at a German deli and meat market.
Finding a seat at one of Swan Market’s four communal tables has always taken a little bit of luck, but the challenge became even more difficult earlier this year when Swan Market was named to USA TODAY’s list of the best restaurants in the country, propelling this lunch-only restaurant into the national spotlight.
While the grocery and meat market is open longer hours, lunch is served only from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Wednesday to Saturday. With only 12 hours a week to indulge on an array of sausages and hearty German fare, it’s no wonder that there’s rarely an empty seat in this crowded dining room.
With taxidermy animals and German memorabilia and bric-a-brac lining the walls, the dining room swelling with boisterous conversation as strangers become friends over steins of beer and the smell of smoked and cured meat permeating the air, the atmosphere at Swan Market feels impossible to replicate.
Truthfully, the entrees are plenty big enough on their own, but that’d mean missing out on the appetizers, including large, soft pretzel sticks ($3 each), served with warm, creamy beer cheese and bowls of homemade soup and goulash loaded with tender pieces of beef and pork. On our visit, the soup of the day was cream of mushroom, a thick, creamy soup full of sliced mushrooms and other vegetables that bore little resemblance to the canned version found in your Thanksgiving green bean casserole.
If you’re new to Swan Market or German cuisine altogether, or you’re an indecisive diner like me who wants to try everything, go for the sampler platter ($16.99), a hearty plate of roast pork, beef roladen, currywurst, goulash served over spaetzle, schnitzel of the week (jaeger schnitzel during our visit, served with a dark brown mushroom gravy), German potato salad, red cabbage and sauerkraut.
The menu at Swan Market isn’t terribly long and about half of it is on this platter. You could call it a sampler, but it’s more of a greatest hits album, from the crispy fried pork cutlet that’s pounded thin, but still tender, to the sweet red cabbage that’s a wonderful foil to the tangy, piquant sauerkraut. While the two types of cabbage are great, this is unmistakably a meat lover’s meal. By my count, the platter has eight separate instances of pork, from the sausage in the stuffing of the pork roast and roladen, to the bacon in the potato salad and roladen stuffing. Yes, that one little roll of beef tucked onto the side of the plate next to the two-meat goulash has three different meats.
A thick slice of Leberkase ($13.99), a cross between bologna and meatloaf whose name translates to “liver cheese,” but contains neither liver nor cheese, may not be the most eye-catching lunch, but the loaf, a fine-textured blend of beef, pork and ground bacon, delivers on the promise of a smoky, salty, intensely meaty experience.
Aside from the sampler platter, all entrees include two sides. The bread dumplings, available with or without gravy (go for the gravy), are like your classic bread stuffing with a heavy hand on the onions. The potato salad, served warm as German potato salad often is, has a texture of smashed potatoes, with a bit of sweetness and smoky flavor from the bacon. It might sound heavy, but the bright flavor of the vinegary dressing keeps it feeling light. It follows the same principles as the sauerkraut and red cabbage; the delectable balance of bright, acidic sides keeping the richness of the meat-laden meal in check.
Between the multi-day marinating process and long cooking time, sauerbraten ($14.99) is a staple German dish that isn’t on most people’s weekday dinner repertoire. It’s that long soak in the spiced wine and vinegar marinade that gives the dish its distinct tangy flavor. The beef in Swan Market’s version is cubed, rather than sliced, as is more common, and served with a generous amount of that flavorful gravy. The sour flavor pokes through, though it’s milder than other versions of sauerbraten I’ve had. Most importantly, the meat was fall-apart tender without being stringy, tough or dry. After all, no amount of gravy, no matter how good, can rescue poorly cooked meat.
Around $15 for a hearty, scratch-made lunch feels more than reasonable, though you’ll want to budget at least a few bucks more to explore the grocery shelves. Underneath the blue marlin and head of a feral hog mounted on the wall, you’ll find a wide variety of German mustards, condiments, cakes, beers and other hard-to-find items, or the meat case at the rear of the market, where you’ll find the house-smoked bacon, fresh and smoked sausages, cold cuts and side dishes available by the pound.
Once prevalent in cities across Upstate New York, German restaurants and markets like these are fewer and farther between these days. But Swan Market, which has been home to a German meat market for over 100 years, appears to be stronger than ever. There’s beauty in the camaraderie among tablemates, a shared experience in knowing you were fortunate enough to land one of the coveted seats. There’s beauty in an establishment that has changed very little over the years, holding fast to the traditions of sausage making and meat processing. And of course, there’s beauty in a big platter of delicious meat.