Main Tower Restaurant & Lounge

The Main Tower Restaurant sits on the fifty-third floor of one of Frankfurt's defining banking-district towers, and the view is — without any exaggeration — the best dining-room view in Germany. The Rhine and Main rivers, the Taunus mountains, the entire banking-quarter skyline at eye level. The kitchen has the unenviable task of holding its own against that.

It does a respectable job. The menu is modern European in the current German register — a fish course that is precisely plated, a beef main that is butter-basted and carved at the pass, a seasonal dessert section that changes monthly. Nothing here is the most ambitious cooking in Frankfurt; Lafleur and Seven Swans are doing that. What the Main Tower does is deliver a room-and-plate experience that is reliably memorable.

The lounge adjacent to the dining room is the reason to come early — a bar programme that is well-stocked, and window seats that make the pre-dinner drink part of the event. The restaurant sometimes runs themed tasting nights; the regular menu is more reliable than the themes.

This is the city's defining showpiece restaurant. It is not where the banker books the quiet deal. It is where he books the anniversary, the proposal, the birthday where the location needs to be the memory.

The fifty-third-floor view at sunset makes the Main Tower a singular birthday venue in Frankfurt. The room sells the occasion; the kitchen plays supporting role. For a proposal timed to dusk, it is the most unambiguously cinematic setting in the city.