When Eating Becomes A Torture

Each time a new restaurant celebrates its grand opening, I´m very keen on going. Restaurant reviews aren´t part of my job as a newspaper journalist, it´s more of a hobby. My friends and I hadn´t heard too many good things about this particular new “Bavarian restaurant” beforehand, but we wanted to give it a try anyway. After all, you should always draw your own conclusions, my grandma always tells me. Though, her advice turns out to be right most of the time, in the case of this restaurant it wasn´t.

Das Restaurant des Grauens

Sie brauchen noch den ultimativen Tipp für Ihr Sylvester-Dinner? Dann habe ich genau das Falsche für Sie, denn bei diesem Gasthaus im Landkreis würde sogar Rach, der Restauranttester, voller Verzweiflung schon an der Türschwelle umdrehen. Und das könnte man sehr gut nachvollziehen.

On entering the restaurant, I had this strange feeling that the good mood we were in wouldn´t survive the evening. It didn´t, but probably just because my grandma was not with us.

As ugly as the color of the house next to the restaurant is, as bad was the service.

The first thing that struck me was the table. It didn´t look like that type of furniture we use to have in kitchens. It was oddly shaped and had a hole in the middle, with a wooden pillar poking out of the top of the whole. Probably the backbone of this greasy spoon. And the country music, blaring through the restaurant, which must have made the neighbors stand upright in bed, also told us we´d made the wrong choice.

But back to the table – and also back to granny: “Always face the person you are talking too”, she says. This is kind of difficult, when you have a tree trunk in front of your face, half as thick as one of those in the Yosemite National Park. Thank God the head waitress told us we weren´t allowed to sit vis-à-vis, because otherwise she and her two tubby colleagues wouldn´t have been able to get to the bar properly without being afraid of committing bodily injury to us. So we sat there, strung out like beads along the table. If the person on the one end of the table wanted to talk to the person on the other side of the table, he would have been better off with a bullhorn. I still wonder why they did not have one of those in the restaurant – hanging from a tree trunk perhaps.

Schon beim Eintreten wird das Gemüt zum ersten Mal auf einer harte Probe gestellt, wenn einem Ballermannmusik á la Mickie Krause und Wolfgang Petry entgegen wummert - andererseits: warum eigentlich nicht? Schließlich steht ja in sieben Monaten schon wieder der Sommerurlaub vor der Tür. Spätestens als „Wolle“ dann aber zum zehnten Mal fragt, warum man ihn in die Hölle schickt, würde man sich am liebsten persönlich darum kümmern – nur um ganz sicher zu gehen. Den Radio samt CD im Handgepäck, versteht sich.

Die nächste Überraschung erwartete uns am Tisch: gegenübersitzen verboten! Die clevere Anordnung der Tische erlaubt keine andere Sitzordnung, denn ansonsten könnten die Bedienungen nicht zu Theke gelangen. Wenigsten steht einem so die tragende Säule nicht im Weg, die mitten durch den Tisch geht und breit genug ist, um sich ohne Probleme dahinter zu verstecken.

Our next surprise came when we went to order our drinks. This “Bavarian restaurant”, wouldn´t let us order a shandy. The reason was simple as it was stupid: “If you want to drink a shandy, you have to order two; otherwise, it leaves a half-empty bottle of beer”, the waitress explained to us. I guess if someone would have taken a picture of our faces, he would have won a “dumb face”-contest. Mouths still agape, the despised shandy-lovers ordered a coke – and surprise, surprise, got it in a bottle without a glass.

Prepared for the worst, we asked for the menu. It was not really to our surprise, I have to admit, that the waitress came back with two single sheets of paper for eight people. Written down on these “menus” were three different meals. I probably should have asked them how to spell “variety”, since all three meals were pork. The only difference between them was the garnish. But I don´t think she would have been able to answer the spelling question. And on the other hand, vegetarian meal, a side salad, might have gotten cold during the one and a half hours we had to wait for our meal.

Alles aber noch Pipifax im Vergleich zur Krönung des Abends: die Getränkebestellung. Ein gutes bayerisches Wirtshaus verwöhnt seine Gäste gerne mal mit einem süffigen Bier, gegebenenfalls einem Radler. Da die Betonung aber auf gut liegt, kann man sich schon denken, dass in diesem Wirtshaus alles anders ist: Hier muss man sich nämlich zwei Radler bestellen oder man bekommt gar keines, da die Bedienung meinte, sie müsse ja eine Flasche Bier für das Radler aufmachen und die könne sie sich dann nicht halbvoll stehen lassen. Da wir im Baum keine versteckte Kamera finden konnten, - breit genug wäre er zumindest gewesen - musste sie es also ernst meinen. Da hat sich wahrscheinlich nicht nur der Holzwurm schlapp gelacht.

Stark erheitert und noch mehr verärgert verließen wir nach gut zweieinhalb Stunden das Wirtshaus wieder. Das Essen – insgesamt gab es sage und schreibe drei verschiedene Speisen zur Auswahl – hat schließlich gedauert und abgeräumt haben wir auch selbst. Wenn Sie also den Jahreswechsel pünktlich mitbekommen wollen, sollten Sie früh reservieren – oder einfach hingehen, denn einen Platz bekommen Sie dort sicher. Wenn Ihnen auch ein Baum im Weg steht…

The icing on the cake – which we weren´t served, because it was not on the “menus” - was that we were almost forced to carry our plates back to the bar. It seemed that the waitresses totally forgot us although we were sitting only two meters behind them. But that was for sure not the only less than professional thing they did that evening. We weren´t even offered a schnapps at the end of the meal, which would have been the least that they could have done. All we got was just one simple excuse: “You arrived at our busiest time. There was just too much going on. Sorry about that, it won´t happen again next time.” We might have forgotten to mention that there wouldn´t be a next time.

When I told my boss at the newspaper that I wanted to write a column about my experience, he didn´t believe me at first. After a couple of minutes, though, I convinced him that this restaurant visit really did take place. And so, he told me to put it down on paper. By the way, people are saying that the restaurant isn´t doing very well and will probably close in the next two or three months. It did make for a good story.