Chef Keem’s Bavarian Bistro Recipes: The Collection from the Austin Food Trailer

Every so often a reader asks whether “Chef Keem” is a made-up character for this site, and the honest answer is more interesting than that. He is a real person, Achim Thiemermann, and before this address explained Weißwurst and the noon rule in my guide to Bavarian food, it belonged to his food trailer. This page is where I collect what is left of that trailer: his own account of why he ran it, his stance on secret recipes, and the pages on this site that still carry his name.

The trailer, briefly

Chef Keem’s Bavarian Bistro opened in Austin, Texas, in the summer of 2010, run by Achim Thiemermann and a few friends. It served Bratwurst, Wiener Schnitzel, Leberkäse and sauerkraut to a city that, by his own account, had mostly never met a Leberkäse before, and it closed before the year was out. Before it closed, he used the trailer’s blog, at this same web address, to post recipes and cooking technique, which is how a Texas food trailer ended up as the origin story for a site about Bavaria. When he retired, he gave the domain to the editor who writes this site now, and asked that his recipes stay up, credited to him.

Nothing on this site claims the trailer was a large operation or a long-running one. It was a single summer, a handful of dishes and a blog attached to it, and that is the whole scope of what “Chef Keem’s Bavarian Bistro” ever was. The site that grew out of its address is considerably bigger than the trailer that named it, which is a strange kind of legacy for a food cart that closed within the year, and also, I think, the right one.

"No secret recipes"

The post that gives this page its title is Chef Keem’s argument against the entire premise of the celebrity-chef secret recipe. His position was that a secret recipe is usually either a marketing device or a way to manufacture value for a cookbook, and that everything he knew how to cook, he had been taught by generous teachers and friends, which made calling any of it secret dishonest. As he put it himself, “why the hell would I take these gifts and call them a secret?” His answer to what actually separates one cook’s version of a dish from another’s was not a hidden ingredient. It was attention: focus, care and, in his own word for it, love, the thing he argued a recipe card cannot write down and a distracted cook cannot fake.

That is the frame for everything else on this page. Chef Keem was not sitting on a vault of techniques he was withholding from a food trailer’s customers. What he had was a handful of methods he was willing to explain in full, and two of them are still here.

Resi says I did not write the recipes on this page. I rewrote them, in my own voice, with his name attached, because that was the deal when this domain changed hands, and because I think a site about Bavarian food should be honest about where its name actually came from. If you want the fuller shelf of Bavarian and German cookbooks I would put next to his two recipes, that is a separate page, not a secret one.

The recipes still on this site

Two of Chef Keem’s original posts have been rewritten in full on this site, with his name on the method and his own words quoted where they earned it. My Rouladen recipe is built on the method he first posted here in 2010, filled with mustard, bacon, onion and a pickle, and it credits him for the one rule that has not changed: sear the rolls properly. My browning meat page is his goulash technique, on how to brown meat in batches without crowding the pan, laid out step by step under his name rather than compressed into the two-minute blog post it started as.

What the trailer served, and where to read about it here

The trailer’s own menu, by his account, was Bratwurst, Wiener Schnitzel, Leberkäse and sauerkraut, and each one has its own page on this site now, though none of those pages claim to be his recipes the way the two above do. My Bratwurst page covers the regional varieties Bavaria actually cooks. My Wiener Schnitzel FAQ settles the veal-or-pork argument his trailer’s customers were probably having in line. My Leberkäse page explains the loaf that most of his Austin customers had never met before, and my Sauerkraut vs Bayrisch Kraut page explains what he was actually serving alongside it, and what he was not.

Why the site keeps his pages

I keep Chef Keem’s pages up, and keep crediting him by name, because a site that explains Bavarian food owes its own name to a real trailer and a real cook, not to a marketing decision, and because his argument against secret recipes is one I happen to agree with. The domain outlived the trailer by a considerable margin. The least it can do is remember whose it was first.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Chef Keem?

Chef Keem is Achim Thiemermann, the chef who opened a German food trailer, Chef Keem’s Bavarian Bistro, in Austin, Texas, in the summer of 2010, and who wrote the recipe and food-fact posts that started this site.

What happened to the Bavarian Bistro food trailer?

It closed before the end of 2010, the same year it opened, after serving Bratwurst, Wiener Schnitzel, Leberkäse and sauerkraut in Austin.

Why does a Bavarian food site have an Austin food trailer in its history?

Because that trailer is where the domain bavarianbistro.com started. When Chef Keem retired, he gave the domain to the site’s current editor and asked that his recipes stay up, credited to him.

Are Chef Keem's recipes still on the site?

Two of his original posts, on Rouladen and on browning meat for goulash and stews, have been rewritten in full detail and are still credited to him by name.

Did Chef Keem actually have secret recipes he was not sharing?

No. His own stated position was the opposite: he argued that secret recipes are usually a marketing device, and that everything he knew had been taught to him and was worth sharing in full.

Does Chef Keem still run the site?

No. He retired and gave the domain to the editor who writes it today, Resi Zauber, on the condition that his recipes stay up and stay credited to him.

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