Restaurant Prinz Carl

The story

Restaurant Prinz Carl Buchen: Regional German Cooking in the Odenwald

The Kitchen and Its Creator

Jens Jaegle leads the kitchen at Restaurant Prinz Carl in Buchen, guiding a German cooking style that prioritizes honesty, seasonality, and strict regional sourcing. He travels to the Mannheim wholesale market every Tuesday morning to select fresh vegetables, while his team maintains a dry aging cabinet for locally sourced beef. The result is a refined kitchen where ingredients like Dinkelbrot and handcrafted pasta are prepared without artificial additives. This dedication to pure, unadulterated flavors recently earned the Schlemmer Atlas rating of one and a half spoons, validating a menu built entirely on traceable producers.

Signature Plates and Seasonal Shifts

The menu rotates according to what arrives from neighboring farms and local hunters. Guests frequently order the Odenwälder Mostbraten paired with housemade Bubespitzle, glazed apple slices, and Wirsing vegetable. Other recurring highlights include monkfish draped in sesame with saffron sauce and green noodles, alongside pickled beef tongue served with Tropaeola onions and lamb’s lettuce. A brief annual celebration of Spanish tapas also features each May when chef Carles Cano Camps visits from Tenerife, temporarily shifting the focus toward grilled vegetables and aged Iberian products.

The Dining Space and Family Tradition

Located within the historic core of Buchen, the restaurant operates as part of the family-run Prinz Carl hotel complex. The interior blends preserved architectural elements with comfortable seating arranged to encourage unhurried meals. Karin, Jens, and Lisa Jaegle manage both hospitality and service with a consistent emphasis on attentive, unpretentious care. The adjacent Vitalhotel wing and nearby artisan shops extend the same regional sensibility into the broader guest experience, making the dining room a steady anchor for German cuisine in the Odenwald.