German Food

While attending the trade show in Berlin I wanted to taste some good German food, but the fare at the ITB’s food court was rather uninspiring. I was not a huge fan of Bratwurst, and although others consumed the fat sausages eagerly I wasn’t impressed.  I ate breakfast each day at the hotel, which consisted of cheese, cold cuts, rolls and yoghurt, and while it was acceptable food it wasn’t the German cuisine I wanted to experience.

Bruno Fink, the man who owned the Bequia Beach Club at Friendship, had flown in from Stuttgart for the trade show.  He offered to take the tourism department out for dinner, and that included me.  Bruno led us to a restaurant located on Kurfurstendamm, West Berlin’s famous main street.  It was easy to see that the dining establishment catered to tourists, the menu had pictures of animals beside each offering, which I found pretty funny.  The menu was written in German but at least you knew whether you were ordering fish, pork, beef or chicken!  I asked Bruno to translate the word Petersilienkartoffeln for me, it was the longest word I had ever seen and I wondered what it meant.  When he told me it meant Parsley Potatoes I had to laugh, such a long word for such simple food!  I ordered the Wiener Schnitzel, and although it was O.K I found it somewhat tasteless. The vegetables also lacked inspiration, the potato salad on one side of the meat and the sauerkraut on the other made for a strangely colorless and bland plate of food. Bruno was disappointed in the restaurant and informed us that the food was not good German food at all.  He wanted to fly us to Stuttgart so that we could experience real German cuisine, what we had just eaten was tourist fare.

I spent a lot of time with Janet Woods, the Director of the St. Vincent Department of Tourism, and discovered that she had a lot of friends from other Caribbean Islands.  I believe it was the owner of a hotel in Anguilla who told us about a famous place in Berlin called Zur letzten Instanz.  This family-run restaurant was evidently established in 1621, making it the oldest restaurant in Berlin, and boasted having served Napoleon and Charlie Chaplin.  This I had to see!  A plan was immediately made for Janet, myself and the delegation from St. Kitts to dine at Zur letzten Instanz the following evening.  I was advised by those who had already patronized the restaurant to order the house specialty, something called Eisbein.

The Berlin trade show was held in the middle of March, and it was snowing as we approached the famous restaurant on Waisenstrasse.  I was impressed by the old building, with its green wooden shutters and soft lighting it looked very inviting after our cold walk.  The aromas as we opened the front door smelled heavenly, and I knew without a doubt that I was going to enjoy the food!  The restaurant was filled to the brim with noisy diners, and at a glance I could see that we were probably the only tourists.  It was actually hard to see what the interior of the restaurant looked like, and when the waiter approached our table I could barely see his head.  Every diner seemed to have a fork in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other, and the smoke floated heavily in the air.

The menu was long and confusing. I spoke no German and they didn’t have fish, chicken, cow and pig pictures for me to have an idea of what was on offer!  However, I remembered the advice I had been given and ordered the Eisbein and a Pils, then settled back to enjoy the festive atmosphere.  It was always a good sign when a restaurant was packed, even better when it was packed by locals, and I knew the food must be good.  I drank my beer and people-watched through the cloud of cigarette smoke that hung like drapes over each table, waiting happily for the arrival of my Eisbein.

I was blown away when my dinner was placed in front of me.  The meal was so huge that it sat on an oblong platter instead of a plate, there was no way one person could possibly eat all that food.  Eisbein had been described to me as pork knuckle and I therefore hadn’t been expecting what appeared to be a whole ham on my plate!  Janet Woods was amazed by her Eisbein as well, whispering that it could feed a whole village in St. Vincent.  When I tasted the tender pork it was indescribably delicious, I had never eaten such wonderful meat and devoured as much of it as was humanly possible.  It was superb. As Janet and I walked back to our hotel we laughed about the experience, we had not been able to eat even a quarter of the Eisbein yet the tables around us had finished every scrap. It had been my first taste of real German food and I have never forgotten it, I can still almost taste it more than three decades later!