Pielok

Pielok ran as a paneled, plain spoken Wirtshaus a few minutes from Bockenheimer Warte, with home cooking added to the menu during the war years. The room never chased fashion across eight decades, which is exactly why three generations of students kept coming back.

After the war the house became the dining room of Bockenheim's academic milieu. Genussmagazin Frankfurt records that the tables mixed the Sponti scene around Joschka Fischer and Daniel Cohn-Bendit with professors like the Mitscherlichs, all eating the same plain Frankfurt plates. Few city taverns can claim that kind of guest book.

The cooking stayed plain Frankfurt throughout: lunch plates added in the 1940s, Apfelwein alongside, nothing on the menu chasing a trend. Local directories like Gastroguide and frankfurt-tipp.de filed it under traditional German cooking to the end. That consistency is what let a 1930 cafe survive as a 2016 institution.

Hans Juergen and Peter Gehring ran the final stretch and closed the house for reasons of age, not trade. The local press treated the last service like a small civic funeral, and the room had earned it after 86 years under three names and one address. Bockenheim has not replaced it; the university quarter's drinking has scattered toward the Warte and the city center since.

For a living family run cider house, take the U4 east to Apfelwein Solzer Frankfurt in Bornheim, where the family has pressed its own apples since 1893. For the classic tavern row, cross to Sachsenhausen for Apfelwein Wagner Frankfurt and Lorsbacher Thal Frankfurt. Both appear in our Frankfurt pubs guide.