Chez Hansi

23 rue des Marchands Cuisines: French

About

Set within two rooms of a half-timbered house dating from 1532, this is the most historic and most folklorically charming restaurant in a town that's loaded with worthy competitors. Even its name is a reference to the pen name (Hansi) of Jean-Jacques Waltz, a 19th-century illustrator, who in his artwork elevated Alsatian kitsch to an art form rivaled in America by Norman Rockwell. You'll find this hypertraditional place in the Vieille Ville, beneath massively beamed ceilings and a staff whose females are clad in dirndls. Come here for steaming and heaping platters of choucroute (sauerkraut garnished with pork products), foie gras, onion tarte, pot-au-feu that's redolent with gravy and chunks of beef, and, for the ultra-adventurous, calf-head (tete de veau) garnished with an apple in its mouth.