A fresh pretzel, shiny and warm from the oven, covered in melted, still bubbling cheese. Honestly? You can take your tasting menus, take your molecular gastronomy, take your small plates, and shove them, frankly. Because heaven, to paraphrase Belinda Carlise, is a place in Bolton.
What Angelika Searle doesn’t know about pretzels really isn’t worth knowing. She knows the history inside out - the Romans were involved, French monks somewhere along the line, before they were adopted and finessed by the Germans - but most importantly, she knows exactly how they’re supposed to taste.
That said, the confirmed ‘dumpling muncher’ (in the south of Germany you’re a dumpling muncher - a ‘knödelfresser’ - and in the north, you’re a fish head, a ‘fischkopf’) only started making them around four years ago.
