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‘Grandma’s food’: How changing tastes are killing German restaurants


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I live in the hinterlands so can't speak to trends, but the two semi-local German restaurants I know of (Mid-Hudson Valley area NY) are doing very well. Granted, they rely heavily on craft beer sales and have made some menu updates (e.g. veg/vegan options). I agree that the traditional "stodgy" German restaurant is fading.

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:D

How are German food restaurants doing? Some are fine, some are improving and rising, some are struggling, some are going downhill because the general trend is towards lighter food here too (which CAN be at odds with traditional German food). Like everywhere else. Many French bemoan the trend away from typically French cuisine too. :lol:

As for "German" restaurants in the US, are they actually German (which would be a wide gastronomical field anyway, supposedly most of the long-established ones imitate dishes from Southern Germany - which isn't ALL of "German" gastronomy anyhow)? Aren't they rather a US variation or evolution of dishes with German overtones or maybe even just a cliché-laden imitation of what would one like to believe to be German? Reading the article one is left bewildered. Reading about "Bavarian cuckoo clocks" for decoration, for example, is one of the dumbest things that a writer could put into print when trying to capture the atmosphere around the dishes served. Cuckoo clocks are typical for some regions of Germany indeed but the Black Forest is not really part of Bavaria. Not even remotely. If you are fine with that anyway - OK, but I suppose those who feel so would then agree with tourists too who think they have understood the US when they figure Stetson hats are most typically worn where the Niagara Falls are.

Reminds me of story a friend told me the other day of a couple of Italian brothers emigrating recently to the US. They all were fine and well-qualified cooks, figuring they would not have any trouble finding a job there. In fact they did not but the first thing their first employer - Italian too - did was to set them wise: "So you're from Italy and you are cooks and know the Italian cuisine? Fine .. but to start with, forget all the specificities you have learned. Remember, this is the US. Italian food in the US is not what you'd consider Italian food where you came from. It is no coincidence they speak of "American pizza", for example." And so on and so on ... ;)

BTW, as for trying to figure out what country "Schnitzel" (particularly the "Wienerschnitzel" cited in the text) is most typically associated with, check this: :g

https://www.discogs.com/de/Crazy-Cubes-Hemenex-Rockabulls-Rioters-Schnitzelbilly-Rockabilly-made-in-Austria-1/master/887098

 

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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VERY, VERY INTERESTING.  I have been coplaining about this for years.  Then again I cant find decent tacos here either.  But changing tastes are stupid--- they want fancy and trendy,  not down home and filling.  Dog theres a German town 100 mi away where i could get pork cutlet but its a freaking 2 lane highway not freeeway and i dont know really wanna drive back 100 mi on a 2 lane highway after slamming pork cutlet, if it was freeway, no prob

Edited by chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez
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10 minutes ago, sidewinder said:

‘Black Forest Gateaux’ :P

What is that? - I can hear our German board members say..

This, very obviously:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Forest_gateau    ;)

Since France (gateau is French for "cake") is not extremely far away from that region we won't hold this language mixup against English speakers. We're glad enough if the Americans (or Canadians or whoever ...) don't expect to be able to step off their River Rhine cruise boat and jump just across the street into the Oktoberfest beer tents . :g

 

 

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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New York City had a large German section on the East Side between 79th to 86th and bordered by 2nd Avenue to Madison Avenue.  And not just German food but Czech food too.  I remember eating at a very good Czech restaurant in 1981 or 82 and having some delicious duck.  I believe very few of these places are left. In their web site, http://www.heidelberg-nyc.com/#about, the Heidelberg Restaurant, which is still located in the heart of old Germantown, says that "Of the dozens of German restaurants that once adorned the streets of Yorkville in Manhattan's Upper East Side, the Heidelberg Restaurant is all that remains.  Heidelberg has made it its mission to honor these establishments, and to preserve an important piece of cultural history."

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On ‎23‎.‎03‎.‎2018 at 3:32 PM, sidewinder said:

‘Black Forest Gateaux’ :P

What is that? - I can hear our German board members say..

Washed down with a crate of ‘Blue Nun’, of course :lol:

I´m from Austria, so that´s also a german speaking country, though we have another accent than especially people from Northern Germany.

Austrian , especially Viennese style cookin is quite famous and many tourists are visiting our country and enjoy our restaurants.

Once, my wife and me made a holiday-visit  to a small town in Northern Germany, where we visited some friends. We really had fun, especially if we went to restaurants and if it´s about food, ingredients and some beverages we have other expressions for them than the german people, much to the delightment of the locals . They really "studied" our funny expressions, we have other words for a lot of things that really sounds funny to them but they love it, especially since there are many Germans comin to Austria on holiday, but very few Austrians goin to lesser frequented northern german towns. So even one year later when we came back, they recognized us as those "funny Austrian people". The shop were my wife asked for a plastic bag and she said in the austrian manner "Sackerl" and the woman said " a .... what?........ you mean a "Tuetchen". The next year she recognized us as those who say "Sackerl".

In Germany we ordered "Viennese Schnitzel" and they served it with mushroom sauce and french frieds, quite unusual for austrians, but we loved it. They had Schnitzel with mushroom sauce or with some picant sauce and that was "Schnitzel Hunter´s style" or "Schnitzel Gipsy Style".

When the waiter asked "What kind of Schnitzel" I said "make a Hunter out of it...." and everybody laughed, they never heard that......

Wow.......... never thought I´d ever write on a non-jazz topic.........

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I took my Dad to Germany for a week in 1999. He was all excited to eat authentic German Bratwurst & Sauerkraut. I told him that I hadn't seen many restaurants selling that in my years of traveling there. We arrived in Munich and took a tour north. Würzburg, Frankfurt, Köln, etc. We did not go to one restaurant that had bratwurst & sauerkraut. :)

Finally, we rented BMW motorcycles went on a tour of southern Germany and into Austria and Switzerland. At our first Austrian restaurant stop, my father literally yelled out, "They have bratwurst & sauerkraut"! I still laugh when I think about it.

RIP Dad. We had fun, didn't we?

00000009.JPG

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Been to most of the German restaurants all around the greater St. Louis area (especially on the east side of the river, closer to where my dad still lives).  He's about 98% German, and I think both his folks (my grandparents) spoke German in the families they grew up in (here in the states).  My grandmother was born in 1897, back when there was a really substantial German immigrant population in and around St. Louis, and all throughout southern-Illinois, and the "Missouri Rhineland" (central Missouri, between St. Louis and Columbia/Jefferson-City).

To this very day, at least once or twice a year we take my Dad to a German restaurant for his favorite: rouladen -- some better, and some nowhere near to his very particular liking (he'll be 91 in a few months, so he's getting more and more "particular" with every year these days).  Well outside of St. Louis, over the last 15+ years we've taken him to German restaurants in Hot Spring, AK - Washington DC - Nashville or Memphis (I forget which, to be honest), and Kansas City -- and come to think of it, also in Iowa and Minnesota too, iirc (closer to 20 years ago).

Every few years, another German restaurant in/around St. Louis seems to close.  And as the article in the OP's post stated, they all seem like going back in time.

My wife and I will be down in Austin in mid-may, and the Hill Country area - and hope to get some German food down there too.  Not that we're huge fans of it, but given my family's heritage (and I say "my family's" - because I was adopted, and don't really know my own ethnicity specifically, though I suspect I'm also a Euro-mutt myself, with a fair bit of German in me too) -- that we're open to having German food now and then, even without my Dad along.

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Your father's problem with rouladen is probably similar to any fan. Rouladen seems to be made differently at every German restaurant I've ever been in. Some have a whole pickle wrapped inside, some have ground pickle mixed into a filling and some don't have pickle at all. Some have bacon, some don't. Some have onions, some don't. It's weird.

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15 minutes ago, Rooster_Ties said:

Been to most of the German restaurants all around the greater St. Louis area (especially on the east side of the river, closer to where my dad still lives).  He's about 98% German, and I think both his folks (my grandparents) spoke German in the families they grew up in (here in the states).  My grandmother was born in 1897, back when there was a really substantial German immigrant population in and around St. Louis, and all throughout southern-Illinois, and the "Missouri Rhineland" (central Missouri, between St. Louis and Columbia/Jefferson-City).

To this very day, at least once or twice a year we take my Dad to a German restaurant for his favorite: rouladen -- some better, and some nowhere near to his very particular liking (he'll be 91 in a few months, so he's getting more and more "particular" with every year these days).  Well outside of St. Louis, over the last 15+ years we've taken him to German restaurants in Hot Spring, AK - Washington DC - Nashville or Memphis (I forget which, to be honest), and Kansas City -- and come to think of it, also in Iowa and Minnesota too, iirc (closer to 20 years ago).

Every few years, another German restaurant in/around St. Louis seems to close.  And as the article in the OP's post stated, they all seem like going back in time.

Cannot recall having EVER eaten any "rouladen"with a WHOLE pickle inside. Must be a regional thing. Only pickle fillings I can remember having tasted are either sliced lengthwise or cut down into tiny pieces.

BTW, one of my mother's uncles (emigrated from Germany to the US right after WWI) ran a German-style "watering hole" in St. Louis until his retirement in the early 50s. Who knows ... your grandparents might perhaps have been to this place. (My mother - now 94 - doesn't remember the name of the place, though). The German immigrant population in that area really seems to ahve been everywhere (my mother's other uncle was head butler with the Busch family (of Anheuser-Busch fame) during the same period, BTW).

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1 hour ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Cannot recall having EVER eaten any "rouladen"with a WHOLE pickle inside. Must be a regional thing. Only pickle fillings I can remember having tasted are either sliced lengthwise or cut down into tiny pieces.

BTW, one of my mother's uncles (emigrated from Germany to the US right after WWI) ran a German-style "watering hole" in St. Louis until his retirement in the early 50s. Who knows ... your grandparents might perhaps have been to this place. (My mother - now 94 - doesn't remember the name of the place, though). The German immigrant population in that area really seems to ahve been everywhere (my mother's other uncle was head butler with the Busch family (of Anheuser-Busch fame) during the same period, BTW).

I can only recall eating rouladen with a whole pickle inside once. It was a small gherkin pickle, not a whole dill pickle. At another place, there was a whole quarter lengths of a dill pickle in there, so the idea of a pickle that's not chopped up seems to be out there.

Whole Gherkins - See:

Image result for rinderroulade whole pickle

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1 hour ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Yes, quarter lengths of that larger pickle sounds familiar. But an entire huge pickle (if this is what was meant, e.g. on Wiki) - ouch ..

What my dad's gotten most (all?) places over the years is a quarter-length.  And that's how my mom used to make them too (and I think my dad mother too, iirc).

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Rouladen ... never heard them called that (hey there @Gheorghe :)) - we call them "Fleischvögel" (aka "meat birds") - and yes, only plural (singular would be "Vogel" ...)

And make sure not to mix "Vögel" with "vögeln" - that "n" ending for plural isn't always correct - in this case what you'd be saying instead of "birds" would be uhm, "to shag" ... - but to make it confusing, in some cases - linguistically speaking that is - "Vögeln" would again be the correct plural of "birds" ... then you surely do know Alfie and his quest for "birds" too, don't you?

Image result for caine alfie

cheers!

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