This one's for Genne.
I think it is appropriate to start this post on German cuisine by discussing Portland. The City of Roses enjoys a burgeoning culinary scene featuring eateries from most every country on the map. And in this robust foodscape can you think of one German restaurant? Okay, a lot of people have been to the Rheinlander. Know anyone who has gone twice?
German food is an exhaustive exploration of the various combinations of pig and potato. Occasionally to be spiced with cabbage.
Indulge me a moment of amateur food anthropology. The greater part of Germany rests above the 49th parallel, so for those keeping score at home, this means long cold winters. In my short time here, I can already testify to the ball chillingly cold nature of the German winter. The fairer and often tastier plants are simply not made for the Fatherland. This means that as a preindustrial Bavarian farmer your crop options were limited to hardy greens, grains, and root vegetables. Oh, and a pen full of fat delicious schwein stuffed full of all your chard and potato castoffs. So out of the larder and root cellar was born the German culinary tradition.
Now, I must say that I am a busy man and I did not have time to research any of the above. If anyone feels inclined to fact check this, just don’t.
Okay. One would assume cuisine should evolve in step with technology, but the German culinary legacy has unfortunately survived the advent of modern food storage techniques. Sausage was the pinnacle of their culinary achievements and I guess they decided to quit while they were ahead.
In what will probably be the only complimentary part of this post, I must applaud the German sausage. You just can’t argue with a good brat in a roll. The Müncheners even eat them for breakfast. The thinking must be, “Well, it doesn’t get any better than this so why wait for dinner?”
But from this brief foray into praise we must return to complaint. Perhaps there is some misplaced sense of nostalgia at work. Some comfort food throwback phenomenon not unlike the mac and cheese epidemic of 2009. But goulash seems to be on every menu. One enterprising chef even threw it on top of a pizza. It was on the menu right next to the deer and kangaroo.
Which brings me to another point. German haute cuisine tends toward a blending of the traditional with the insanely exotic. German math time: Pizza + Kangaroo = Fine Dining.
If you have ever tucked into a nice juicy pork chop and thought, “This could really use more sinew,” then Germany is your scene. Top of the list for you would be schäufele. This is a pig shoulder. I have watched colleagues sit down to one of these platters and leave nothing behind but gleaming white bones; a grim testimony to the atrocity which just occurred.
And it is very telling that if you ask a native what the best German food is they will invariably respond, Döner. Which is Turkish. Spit roasted pig with delightful herbs and spices, shaved and stuffed into a pita. They go at the pig with an electric shaver like some crazed barber. Dinner and a show. It is an absolute delight.
Truly, the best thing about the German kitchen is its proximity to Turkey, Greece, and Italy. And to staff the restaurants serving up this fine food, Germany imports the genuine article. Every Italian meal I have eaten here was served with a “Prego!” Same goes for gyros and shawarma. Real live Turks and Greeks are manning the grill. The Mediterranean is well represented here.
However, no Mexicans seem to have made it to this side of the Atlantic. But this has not stopped the tide of Mexican restaurants that seem to be surging through greater Nürnberg. The food sold here under the label ‘Mexican’ is some sort of sick joke. Perhaps it is the famed German black humor but I am not laughing. I’m sorry, but you don’t get to put your own flair on the chimichanga. An enchilada is not open to interpretation. A rolled tortilla does not a burrito make. It is as if the German nation is engaged in some covert war to sully the goodness which is Mexican food. “Ya, wir machen die Mexicanisch food taste like scheise und no one will like it! Ho, ho, ho!” (Yes, Germans laugh like Santa.)
But the most puzzling aspect of German food is the Ingredient Paradox. Walking through a German grocery store is a sensory feast. The produce section will make you want to go vegan. You’ll drool at the butcher counter. Smells from the cheese counter are wafting through the aisles. But when eating at the average German restaurant there is no evidence that the chefs are shopping the same grocery stores as you.
The best German cooking here is going on in our kitchen. Emily whipped up some delicious cabbage dumplings that beat pretty much anything I’ve seen out on the market. Shout out to the Penns – the recipe came from the book you got us.
All right. Enough mockery of the German cuisine. It’s about as easy as pissing in the shower and not half as fun. So is there anything good to say…
Bakeries are everywhere and they are all amazing. They have an omnipresence, like Thai restaurants in Portland. Bigger even. Like Starbucks. I have not been disappointed by any German baked goods. They have perfected the level of sweetness that belongs in a pastry. Masterful subtlety is at play in the German baked good unlike the diabetic explosion coming out of most American ovens.
München has a year round Saturday farmers market called the Vikatualein Markt. It is a foody’s Disneyland. Row upon row of vegetable, fruit, and cheese stands. Butchers selling fresh cuts of meat. Dozens of different potato varieties. Greens I have never even heard of. Little huts selling beer and sausages.
Quick tangent, Munich is the drunkest town I have ever seen. Em and I saw an octogenarian in a three-piece swilling champagne at 10am on a train. Prost good sir.
And we’re back. With spring finally here I will be heading down München way with a cooler and coming back with assorted deliciousness. Portland would do well to emulate this awesomeness.
With two paragraphs of praise of tapped out I can feel myself straying back to the negative. So I’ll call it a day and leave you to ruminate on my new gastronomical existence. Thanks for walking a mile in my stomach.
