6 Best Restaurants in Schleswig-Holstein and the Baltic Coast, Germany

Taste the "Divine beer of the Vikings," a malty cold-fermented amber lager, at Schleswig's only brewery. While the Luzifer Restaurant offers typical brewpub fare, it is the small Viking twists, like roast meat served only with a knife and horned glasses that make this place worth a visit.

Wismar's first brewery (1452) is the only place that still brews Wismarer Mumme, a dark beer with enough alcohol to keep it fresh for export as far away as St. Petersburg. The restaurant serves good-value typical pub food in an old half-timber house near the harbor.

Sailors have stopped in at this restaurant's bar for more than a century. The smoked fish sampler, served on a lazy Susan, is delicious, and the house specialty of fish soup is best washed down with some Rostocker Doppelkümmel schnapps.

Kiel has been a center of German brewing since the Middle Ages, when industrious citizens brewed around the clock for export and visiting merchant seamen. In this brauhaus you can try the Kieler Original and other north German beers in pitchers, or order Kiel beer in large wooden barrels to tap yourself at the table.

It's worth the trip here just to see the rustic interior and copper brewing equipment. Since the restaurant is owned by the Störtebecker Brewery, all Stralsunder and several Störtebecker beers are on tap, including the rare Störtebecker Roggen-Weizen, a wheat beer made with rye, and Germany's first India Pale Ale.

Looking like the cabin of a Kogge (a Hanseatic sailing vessel), the oldest sailors' beer tavern in town serves mostly fish. Order the Fischteller "Schifferhaus," consisting of three kinds of fish—depending on the day's catch—served with vegetables, shrimp, and potatoes.