Blue Ridge Country - September/October 2019 - 70

F L AV O R S

VIRGINIA'S EDELWEISS GERMAN RESTAURANT

Celebrating the Tastes and
Sounds of the Black Forest
This Shenandoah Valley restaurant relies on family recipes that go back well over 100 years.
By FRED & JILL SAUCEMAN

f you walked past Edelweiss German Restaurant in
Staunton, Virginia, early in the morning, you might
think remodeling was going on. But the banging
sound doesn't come from a hammer. It's Ingrid
Moore tenderizing pork.
She calls it one of the "morning jobs," pounding
the thinly sliced pork fillets for that day's schnitzel
dishes. Ingrid arrives at the restaurant at five o'clock in
the morning, six days a week. She says she doesn't ever
set an alarm clock.
Ingrid Moore is almost 80 years old.
A native of Karlsruhe, Germany, she came to the United States when she was 23, first to Queens, New York.
"I had five houses to clean, but that's how I learned
English," she tells us. "Because I didn't speak any English
at that point."
She ended up settling in Virginia because it reminded
her of the Black Forest region of Germany where she had
lived. In 1981, she and her husband opened Edelweiss.
After their divorce, she married Walter Moore in 1990
and began training Walter's son John in the restaurant
business.
"I started out washing dishes and watching her cook
in the mornings," John Moore says. "I did meat-cutting,
waited on tables, cooked, and did janitorial work."
Ingrid says she relies on John to handle the business end of things now, leaving her time to do what
she loves best-cooking the dishes that her mother and
grandmother taught her back in Germany. Talk to any
Edelweiss regular, and usually the first word mentioned
is "authentic."

EDELWEISS GERMAN RESTAURANT
19 Edelweiss Lane, Staunton, Virginia
540-337-1203; edelweissvirginia.com
Tuesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM

"I use the recipes from my mother and
grandmother. That's exactly what I use," Ingrid says.
At first, that involved some mathematical
calculations. Instead of feeding one family, she
had to figure out, for example, how to cook
five gallons of "Rotkohl," German red cabbage.
It's one of those long-cooking morning
dishes, too. The morning we visited with Ingrid, she had just finished making what she
calls "the gravies," including a mushroom and
onion one that tops her Jägerschnitzel, "hunter's cutlet."
Cutting and tenderizing meat come natural to her. Both her grandfather, Gustav, and
her brother, Heinrich (anglicized in America to
Henry), were butchers back in Germany.
When it comes time to finish the schnitzel, Ingrid and
the Edelweiss cooks salt it and pepper it and put a little oil
on it, then dip it in flour, an egg wash, and breadcrumbs.
All the schnitzel dishes at Edelweiss are pan-fried.
"We use old-fashioned cast-iron skillets," says Ingrid.
"They make such a difference. Cast-iron works best for
schnitzel."
For birthdays and holidays back in Germany, Ingrid's
mother, Anna Rudolph, prepared beef rouladen-rolls
of meat stuffed with pickles, carrots, and bacon and seasoned with mustard. That recipe also lives on at Edelweiss, along with a version using pork.
All entrées come with family-style side dishes: red cabbage, Bavarian cabbage, green beans, and Ingrid's housemade German noodles, called spätzle, that go perfectly
with her gravies.
On our first visit to Edelweiss, we had the most tempting table in the house, next to the dessert case. It held
a huge "Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte," Black Forest cherry
cake, flavored with cherry brandy and typical of the region where Ingrid grew up. That's a recipe, though, that
she had to acquire. Every bakery in her hometown made

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Blue Ridge Country - September/October 2019

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