The Herald - The Herald Magazine
German beer hall A flair-free meal in a cavernous space proves a sobering experience
THERE should be an “Achtung!” moment in every German meal and ours comes halfway through the mains as Steve suddenly recoils, spits something out, prods his kasespatzle and calls the Italian waitress over.
OK, he doesn’t actually say “Achtung!” and point to his Bavarian noodle dish with cheese and herb sauce and breadcrumb topping. Being English and extremely polite he says, “Excuse me. Is there any meat in this?”
They both have a prod, and she heads off to the kitchen to check with the Scottish chef, while I sit back from my schweinshaxe. I can confirm my dish does indeed have meat in it, and reflect on whether coming to a German restaurant with a vegetarian was entirely the wizard wheeze it had seemed when we dreamt it up at a leaving do on Friday.
It turned out that both of us had actually been to real German brauhauses in real Germany a few weeks back only to return to Glasgow and discover one had opened in our absence slap, bang in the city centre. They’re like that those brauhauses, or they would be if there was anything even slightly genuinely German about this one.
Anyway, I had pretty good frikadeller on the drive back across the continent and they are on the menu here. Curiously, these are nothing like the flat pork dumplings the Germans love and exactly like meatballs made from, er, mince. In fact they’re called meatballs on the bill and seem to also be called haus fleschballen – that would be meatballs I think – on the website. Damn confusing, this cross-cultural eating.
The buttered greens are actually broccoli. And those house pickles? Definitely on the bill, but I don’t recall them ever arriving on the table.
The currywurst? You’ve got to, haven’t you? Local sourcing, says the website, but they all say that these days. Whether this means it’s handmade by a flaxenhaired German youth in a mountain hut in Possil or it’s sourced from Brake Bros or Farmfoods is unclear. But I can say whatever efforts went into making the two huge, supposedly lightly-smoked pork and beef sausages, they taste exactly like bland, crispy tubes of cheapness. And the curry sauce? It’s sharp, bitter and not very nice.
I should point out that Bavaria Brauhaus is, like every good brauhaus, all about the beer, and only half about the food, I think.
When we came in we stopped at the reception post inside the door and scanned the room’s wood pannelling for (a) somebody actually eating something and (b) a reception person. Neither was immediately visible so I wandered over to the bar and asked the guy if this was a restaurant or a bar. Both was the reply, so off we went to this corner table to scan the large menu and watch the handful of other customers all steadfastly not eating a thing.
We had a flammkuchen, which as flat pizza doughs with topping go was perfectly OK. Steve also had a veggie mushroomy thing which looked very like the spatzle and was also OK.
The kasepatzle turned out to have absolutely no meat in it – hurrah – but the strangely chicken-like texture may have come from cooling smoked cheese. We learn something new every day.
Needless to say with Steve being a vegetarian – and vegetarians being a cautious breed – it remains untouched.
I am about to try it, but then remember
how that bit of recently identified smoked cheese on the top had got there.
I haven’t forgotten the shweinshaxe, or deep-fried pork knuckle. I had pretty much the same dish in Koln, where it came with a delicious mountain of mustardy potato salad. Here’s it’s served with mash and sauce. Once past the crisp, cracklingy skin the meat itself is a bit bland and wet.
We didn’t drink a drop of beer tonight. On reflection, maybe we should have.