RESTAURANT REVIEW : Ham Hocks, Sauerkraut and Polka Music in the High Desert

When Los Angeles restaurant people drop the name Wolf, they’re referring to the celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck. But if someone cries “Wolf” in the high desert, chances are he means Wulf Loenicker.

Loenicker may not be a household name like Puck, but the man is a skilled restaurateur in his own right. He and his partner, Renate Witte, run Edelweiss, a German restaurant in Palmdale specializing in down-home cooking and Old World Gemutlichkeit. Friends, this is no place for mere tourists--we’re talking beer by the stein and live polka music. Edelweiss is an authentic German roadhouse that looks like a Black Forest rathskeller, and you’d better be hungry when you come. The food isn’t for mere tourists, either.

The building happens to have quite a history. It’s the oldest restaurant building in the Antelope Valley, built in the ‘30s by a family named Courson. It has had a number of incarnations, such as El Rancho Courson Cafe, Rupp’s Cafe and the Red Carpet Steak House. A few years back, Loenicker and Witte were visiting California on vacation, fell in love with the high desert and found the building, and that’s how a German restaurant happened to open here by the Redwood Highway.

Once they acquired the building, the pair ripped out the plywood to expose the original tongue-and-groove ceiling and added Tiffany lamps, redwood burl tables and German posters. Today the cluttered, low-ceilinged restaurant looks about like any you’d find in a small German town, except for the redwood and the distinctly American clientele. The owners carefully keep it dark and rustic.

The food is rustic too, much like what you’d get in any German town. All entrees are essentially complete dinners, including soup or salad, vegetables, a mountain of German-style potatoes and dessert. Appetizers don’t really exist in German restaurants, and you won’t find any here, either.

Who needs them? Start with a bowl of hearty potato soup and move on with no regrets to Eisbein, sauerbraten, Kassler rippchen or Oktoberfestplatte, a plate festooned with German sausages.

Eisbein would be my No. 1 choice here. It’s a southern German dish (though Loenicker and Witte are Berliners) basically consisting of a large steamed ham hock. Germans will tell you that the real flavor is in the tender, gristly skin, which tastes of onion, bay leaves and allspice, and Loenicker laments that many of his customers waste the skin, heading straight for the tender nugget of flesh under all the gristle. Too bad; the skin is loaded with delicious surprises. This is one of the best peasant dishes around, but unfortunately it is only available on weekends.

Kassler rippchen could be called a smoked pork chop, but there’s a difference, as Loenicker explains: “You have to get Kassler ripp from a German butcher. The secret is that the meat is pickled before it is smoked”--the pork chop is turned into a luxury version of ham, in other words. It’s a thick chop with a minimum of fat, and a sweet, mild aftertaste: Call it German food for beginners.

Sauerbraten is for more seasoned palates. Loenicker soaks sirloin tip in a red wine and vinegar marinade for about three days. Then the meat is slowly braised, turning into tender, genuinely sour beef with a hint of sugar to offset the pungency.

And then there is the Oktoberfestplatte, served with a variety of powerful German mustards. Loenicker gets his sausages from a 90-year-old German butcher in South Central L.A., Fred Reich Hickory Smoked Meats, and they are delicious. Pale veal-based Weisswurst, juicy pork knackwurst and a grainy, sweetly spicy bratwurst make up the plate.

The traditional accompaniments that make German food so heavy are not avoided at Edelweiss. Some dishes come with a pile of braised red cabbage, others with a heaping side dish of sauerkraut and dumplings. The health-conscious have the option of substituting beans and carrots for them--beans and carrots loaded with butter and garlic, that is.

Sigh. Well, you could always leave the butter off your bread.

All dinners at Edelweiss come with a dish of vanilla pudding, but if you are in luck, there will be some Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte --that’s Black Forest cherry cake to you, mein Freund --for an additional cost. Pay the $2 (or rather, the $2.25: a bargain in any case). This is one of the best cakes around, like eating a chocolate-covered cherry inside a homemade cake. Guten Appetit, Wulf.

Suggested dishes: sauerbraten, $14.95; Kassler rippchen, $14.95; Eisbein, $15.95; Oktoberfestplatte, $14.95.

Edelweiss, 39029 6th St. East, Palmdale, (805) 947-6206. Lunch and dinner 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Tuesday-Sunday. Closed Monday. Beer and wine only. Parking lot. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $25-$40.