My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [106]
Since this restaurant is right next to where we’re going later, giving German food another whirl made sense. The outside is adorably authentic-looking and I’ve wondered what the inside was like when I’ve walked by. Fletch is always saying we should stop in for some big sausages, which always makes me giggle since I apparently turn into Michael Scott whenever anyone says anything even resembling a vaguely double entendre. As part of my cultural Jenaissance, I’m working to change this, but it’s so hard.209
Anyway, on the street, it’s 2009, yet the second we actually enter the restaurant, it’s 1976. I’m not sure why it feels so dated in here, but it might have something to do with the Fifth Dimension playing “Up, Up, and Away in My Beautiful Balloon” on the hi-fi. Or maybe it’s all the faux-wood paneling, or the heavy carpeting and low acoustical tiled ceiling, or maybe it’s just the weird built-in “architectural” arches that we all loved so much back during the Bicentennial.
Each table is surrounded by the chairs my Girl Scout buddy Donna had in her breakfast nook, and the restaurant’s lit with the exact same caned, tulip-shaped hanging lamps I had in my fourth-grade bedroom. Frankly, I’m surprised there are German beer signs on the walls and not Jimmy Carter campaign posters. Feels like a key party could break out in here any minute. We spent a solid five minutes gawping and looking for Jack Tripper before we even picked up our menus.
“What should I get?” I ask Stacey.
“You can go one of two ways with German cuisine. You can take the sausage route. . . .”
I shouldn’t have to tell you what this statement’s effect is on me.
Stacey ignores the interruption and continues. “Or you could go the braised-meat route.” She pauses and raises an eyebrow, waiting to see if I can find an entendre. I can’t, so she goes on. “If you want braised, probably the most traditional item here is the sauerbraten, which is their version of pot roast.”
My stomach inadvertently heaves and I tell her, “Oh, I am not eating that. That I’ve had before. My dad is cuckoo for German food, and once for his birthday, he asked my mom to make him a sauerbraten. She cooked that damn thing for a week and our whole house stank of feet. I kept calling it sour-rotten. Even our dog was repulsed. She hid upstairs for three days. And then when my mom finally served it, the meat was awful and there were gingersnaps in the gravy!”
“To be fair, the recipe calls for gingersnaps. They go in the sauce.”
“Are the cookies whole but soggy from meat juice?”
“No. They’re ground up.”
“Exactly.” And then we both quietly shudder.
Stacey returns to her menu and her smile becomes a wry twist. “Perhaps you’d like a traditional German appetizer? Why don’t you try this or this?” She points to the part of the menu that lists jalapeño poppers and buffalo wings.
“Laugh all you want, but as I kid I’d have killed for ‘traditional German’ poppers or wings, no matter how spicy, if it meant I didn’t have to eat vinegar-cookie stew.”
We decide to forgo appetizers because of the time constraint of hitting our friend’s book signing in an hour. And something tells me we’d have struggled deciding between the herring in cream choice, the sausage salad suggestion, and the headcheese platter.
I order an iced tea because I’m driving, which is a shame because now that I’ve taken some wine courses, I actually understand why German wines like Riesling