German cuisine in Germany?

After feeding largely on homemade American cookies in the figurative middle of Germany, we decided to find some German cuisine eatery within reasonable driving range from our hilltop hideout.

The resulting list had two very funny entries.

The Chinese/Thai takeout is run by a Vietnamese couple
Seeing an opening for Vietnamese food, we asked if they planned to offer some Vietnamese dishes.

No plans.

Don't you think it would be nice to have fried noodles?

No plans.

We gave up and resigned to the fact that it is the German version of the U.S. sushi bars run by Koreans.

The Italian restaurant is run by an Indian guy named Singh
We decided to count this as a sign of integration of the German Italian community into the larger German society. Second or third generation German Italians do not have to work in the restaurant biz any longer, they have moved on to highly trained and much better paid office jobs.

We have not been able to talk to Mr. Singh but we suspect that his children, if he has any, are also on the white collar track.

Another Italian place nearby is run by a young German and Italian couple. Their restaurant is more upmarket than the Indo-Italo pizza & pasta place but not much more expensive -- remember, we are out in the country.

So, what is the restaurant situation in general?

Kebab houses, burger chains, and pizzerias are ubiquitous, dwarfing other types of cuisine.

"German cuisine", in our area, is relegated to truck stops and small hotels. The truck stop version is awful. A pre-packaged micro-wavable disaster of food.

It does beat the premium cat food bags Canadian bush pilots used to carry as emergency chow. The small advantage of the semi plasticized German curry sausages is due to only one thing: sauce. Unlike cat kibbles, the sausages come with a sauce.

The two other German cuisine places nearby are in hotels, the prices start at about twice the pizzeria level, and we have yet to try them.

So, for a few years in Germany, our best German food ever was at a German restaurant in Alameda, California.

But there are other German cooking eateries dotted around the hilltops, and they cover a variety of foods. 

For example, there is an all you can eat "kettle meat" place popular with groups and a single menu item "kettle meat with seasonal sides". Kettle meat is a term from the old days of home butchering, and represents the embodiment of the "waste not" way of life, which ended in these hills only a few decades ago.

Any and all pieces of the animal that could not be used for sausage, roast or cutlet and other meat cuts would be thrown into a huge vat of boiling water and cooked to the point of disintegration. Bones came out of the kettle as clean as the forensic specimen on the TV series Bones.

The restaurant uses the old concept of kettle meat but since they don't collect only the leftovers, they basically put the whole animal in there. Whole as in all the parts, not as in the animal in one or two big pieces.

It is a very social and very greasy affair, we have been told.

Another hidden example of German cooking is in the same village as the kettle meat place but offers modernized German dishes. Run by a TV chef who managed to keep his ego in check, it is a lovely place.

Not easy to find but great.

Just like some other aspects of German culture.