Elegand deconstruction with Joachim Wissler

Schweinebraten, or roast pork, is the holy grail of German cuisine. Done right, it is a hearty mélange of sweet and savory, tender and crunchy, a perfect foil for side dishes like cabbage and dumplings. Done wrong, it is chewy and tasteless, a rubbery mound that grows larger with every bite. Over the years, I have had just about every kind, from celestial to execrable, but until a recent lunch at Vendôme, the acclaimed three-star Michelin restaurant on the outskirts of Cologne, I had never had the ghostly kind.

The first apparition came in a trout course, served with a halo of red-cabbage foam, meant to recall Schweinebraten’s classic accompaniment and foreshadow what was to come. Then, in an Asian-fusion dish titled “Goose Liver,” a quadrangle of slowly cooked piglet, its skin as light and crunchy as a sheet of seaweed, played second fiddle to panfried foie gras in a soy-sauce glaze. Finally, the piglet got its own course, served with mint-laced pea purée and a beer soufflé, aerie riffs on Schweinebraten sidekicks mashed peas, bread dumplings, and beer stein.

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