Square, Practical, Good: Germans and food

The Germans are a people of routine and convention, not least when it comes to food and drink. They are also a people who believe, not always wrongly, that if it's made in Germany (it referring to anything), it's better than from somewhere else. When it comes to cars, they are right. Food, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.

The German attitude to food has been no better encapsulated than in the ultra-snappy slogan for Ritter Sport chocolate. "Quadratisch. Praktisch. Gut." Square, practical, good. It's less a slogan and more a series of words that, in translation, form a lesson for German engineers to explain in English the shape and benefits of whatever they happen to be engineering. Even something as ostensibly pleasurable as eating chocolate needs to be explained according to a manual.

And so it is with other German food. Its functionality dominates over its genuine appeal. It is practical, square in the sense of providing a square (and usually large square) meal, but not necessarily any good.

The Germans engineer everything. And food and drink are no different. Mealtimes are precisely determined as though by real-time systems engineering. Twelve on the dot is lunch. Four on the dot is coffee and cake. Seven on the dot is the evening meal.

The routine and convention are such and the made-in-Germany tag so prevalent that it is hard to imagine any un-Germanic influences disturbing the pre-set equilibrium of German mealtimes and the German propensity to hoover up an entire beef herd in one sitting. However, this convention does skip cultures.

It must be all that engineering, but Germans approach the culture of Mallorcan food with a process of both scientific conformity and enquiry. Unlike the British, who are both predominantly an uncurious breed and one not inclined to be told how they should conduct themselves, the Germans take their convention of process control with them when they travel, along with their manuals. A guide book of some description is always to hand in informing them as to the convention as to what they should eat. They try tapas, for example, because the guide book says so. If it's in the manual, it must be correct.

All this brings us to the impact of a substantial increase in the number of German tourists in Mallorca's main resorts this summer. In Alcúdia, for example, there is a 20% increase in German tourism, one that has not been anything like matched by an increase in British tourism. This increase has had an effect on one area of the local restaurant business. The Indians.

Curry would not be something to be found in the German tourist's manual for eating in Mallorca, but the Germans, as with the British, are still very much creatures of habit; witness, for example, all that coffee and cake being wolfed down at four on the dot every afternoon. And curry has a peculiarly German flavour and a peculiarly German application. The sausage.

Curry wurst is a German institution. While it is thought that the Germans don't have the same taste for tandoori or balti as the Brits, they do like smothering their sausages with curry sauce. It might seem odd that one restaurant has suddenly re-branded itself as a German curry house, but not when you consider this tradition.

Checkpoint Charlie, for this is the new name, boasts that it offers "Berlin curry". When I went past and saw this, I thought it was completely mad. I know I shouldn't have, but it conjured up the thought of waiters from the sub-continent sporting lederhosen and their lady wives swapping their saris for a dirndl. There again, they don't generally wear lederhosen in Berlin.

But it isn't quite as mad as it first seemed. There's something of a moral here. It is one of reacting swiftly to what is happening in the tourist market. If there are that many more Germans around, then adapt to try and attract the business. Berlin curry may not conform to the conformity of how the Germans approach their Mallorcan eating experiences, but it is at least in line with a German market that is nothing if not conventional. Whether there should be a slogan though, I'm not sure. Practical? Possibly. Good? With any luck. But how do you describe the shape of a sausage?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

How Will I Know

Somewhat dire predictions that the British will turn their backs on Mallorca this summer in favour of a fortnight in the rain on the so-called English Riviera should prove to be little more than scaremongering. Whilst the UK freezes and subsides under snow and rain, even the hardest pressed of families, concerned with the onset of rickets, will be thinking that they will need with getting some sun, at some point, and will thus spurn the overcast attractions that are Littlehampton or Morecambe. Meanwhile, the island's Chamber of Commerce is seeking to broaden Mallorca's economy by engaging in an export drive. This might sound a bit odd, as one could legitimately ask what exports. But do not scoff, for you may have in fact scoffed on one of the island's exports. i.e. the potato, though unfortunately, owing to the fact that the final quarter of 2008 was the soggiest since the year Nottingham Forest last won the FA Cup and the first section of the M1 motorway was opened, the spud harvest of Sa Pobla has been a bit of a wash-out. But never fear, because there are other exports, one of which is, apparently, computer software. I must admit I was unaware of the Mallorcan Silicon Valley, and I fancy that pirated copies of Vista are not quite what qualify as forming an export business - well not an official one at any rate. So what this software industry is exactly I'm unsure. Maybe it's the WishfulThinking.com software empire.

Another export possibility is, apparently, food and drink. To this end, there is already a successful (it claims) trade with Seoul in South Korea. This is one way, I suppose, of tackling the stray-dog problem in Mallorca: round them up and ship them off to some Korean kitchens. Given that many a dog is allowed to roam freely by its owner, I would suggest that perhaps that owner, and indeed others, is a little more careful about letting Rover out minus a chaperon, or he could end up as lunch in a Seoul restaurant.

The "big idea", though, of the as-yet unformed Mallorcan export drive is, as I mentioned a week ago, the trade in tourism expertise, otherwise known - in business circles - as "know-how". This is one of those utterly vague concepts which, because it is so vague, can be invoiced at vast amounts on the principle that the vaguer and the more obscure it all is, the more valuable it must be. It is also known, in some business circles, as "bullshit". One grand example of this know-how is that by which lesser developed countries have spent vast proportions of their GDP acquiring the skill to enable them to ruin their own economies. This particular know-how comes from and is known as the British banking sector. Anyway, the main area of know-how that is knocking around the Mallorcan economy is that to do with tourism. I confess that I have a slight problem with this. What actually does it mean? Does it refer, for example, to instructing Mongolians as to how to build entire streets of karaoke bars or is it something more general, like advising other essentially summer tourism destinations how to create a flourishing and vibrant winter tourism market, just like the one that the Mallorcan tourism expertise has produced in Mallorca? Maybe this export drive could be targeted at a market that has long suffered because of competition from Mediterranean resorts, even though it was the market in which tourism was first developed. Coals to Newcastle. But, for God's sake, don't sell too much tourism expertise or people might start taking their holidays in Britain.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Captain Beefheart (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9UKANkpPLI). And thanks to John who pointed out that it could have been Human League and also David Thomas of Pere Ubu of whom (Pere Ubu) there will probably be more at some point. Today's title - from when she was any good.

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