Maison Kammerzell

This guide to Maison Kammerzell in Strasbourg looks past the carved timber facade tourists photograph to the ground-floor brasserie's real draw, a sauerkraut dish so guarded that only the current chef knows the full recipe. You'll hear how it began almost by accident in 1970, when a Paris chef swapped the usual pork and sausage for fish to sell cabbage through a slow summer, and how the dish followed him when he took over this five-century-old house in the 1980s. Along the way the guide traces the building's own past, from the stone ground floor built in 1427 to the cheese merchant who stacked three carved timber storeys on top in the 1580s. Look up for the seventy-five small panes of bottle glass still catching the light above your head.