Saftige Bavarian Kitsch, I

"Schmalz."

"Bitte?"

"Dass heisst Schmalz."

Neo-Gothic Town Hall

My Lederhosen-clad waiter has just told me what that rich, deeply flavorful paste on the dumpling is (I was guessing browned butter. It is browned butter, kind of a roux really) but the word throws me off because in the Germany I know better (Hamburg), Schmalz is salted pork fat flecked with crispy onions. At Sammy's Romanian on the lower east side in New York, Schmalz is pourable chicken fat. Schmalz evokes far more than "things that melt" though... And lots of them are here, all delicious.

For years now, whenever I fly to the states I try to get myself routed through Munich, which although a geographically logical stopping point between Thessaloniki and going over the north pole to San Francisco, is logical in no other way. Munich, anything but a graceful segue, simply short circuits me completely through a bombardment of juicy playfulness, sumptuous Gothic terror (yes with a full moon so bright you knew it was cold out just by looking at it), monumental severity, grand vistas, Baroque opulence, 60's elegance (oh, yes!), whimsical kitsch, and no small portion of Bavarian kink (think Maerchenkoenig Ludwig II and extremely suggestive Trachtenmode). And that's not even mentioning their truly chic contemporary side (if you keep looking in the windows of the furniture stores you will simply never get anywhere and you will miss your Kaffe and Kuchen, which would be a shame).

The square is filled with the merriment of pleasantly drunken
teenagers on school trips from all over Europe.

This time, I got routed for an overnight stay- just 21 hours, including a good night's sleep. I feel like I was there a week.

I got to my small hotel room Am Sendlinger Tor as the light was already fading, and cold was setting in, so I didn't waste any time- camera, notebook, cash, and out the door, first to case the restaurant the hotel suggested (I said I wanted Bavarian, an experience, was not averse to Kitsch, but was averse to groups of drunken teenagers), which has all kinds of Knoedel and Schwein on the menu, and big dark long tables. The restaurant was on the Blumenstrasse, and on the way there, I passed a homeopathic pharmacy with an outrageous Easter window display (I know- the absolute last place you look for whimsy, right?),

Chocolate bunnies pose with tinctures and salves!

and a textile store that was the first in a night and a day of one aching materialistic longing after another. Les Tissus Colbert had a thick canvas cloth printed as one huge map of the continents in beautiful repetition joined by a sweet blue sea.

Turning off this dark boulevard, I passed the first of many high ceilinged beer halls, and suddenly found myself in a quiet lane with the most adorable bar, restaurant, neighborhood place where you would want to be friends with anyone inside just because they had such nice taste- old metal signs, mirrors, candles, a jumble of wine glasses, and a pizza of the day- speck and asparagus (more on asparagus later- they seem freakishly proud of it, and it costs more than shrimp). Why didn't I take a picture for us? Because it was so perfect, so intimate, it seemed wrong. Why didn't I eat there? It was too intimate for any kind of anonymity, and also because I didn't want my only meal in Bavaria to be pizza, as perfect as it sounded.  Besides, Marienlatz, Walt Disney cum Wagner version of Germany, was just 10 minutes away.

On the way, between the charming bistrot, and the film museum (with its own charming cafe restaurant were everyone had cool glasses and perfect satchels and seemed to be engaged in intellectual conversation that was somehow not pretentious), was a row of shops of traditional fashion- Dirndl, Trachtenmode, in various qualities- expensive and discrete, and cheap and, well... cheap.

A dull upscale shopping street, an Apple store, then- oh my- here we are in the faux middle ages with shiny cobblestones, Gothic spires, and group after group of drunken teenagers on holiday. Somehow, they seem picturesque here- hardly the first pink-cheeked revelers the square has seen in 800 years.

Disappointingly (I've just now looked it up), the huge black-sooted tall-spired building defining the (itself very old) square is not Gothic, but Gothic revival (finished in 1908!). But, on second thought it's even better this way- there is a beautiful self-consciousness, or better yet- self-awareness- to Germany, Bavaria in particular; they know what they have, and this Gesamtkunstwerk approach, by definition so intentional, runs a very good game against authenticity (which, when you think about it, is really just the product of chance- that and not screwing everything up).

It's nice to amble through the alleys, icy moonlight peeking through scary fairy-tale clouds. I saw a semi-kinky agent Provocateur window display, and a few steps later, Easter chocolates twinkling wholesomely in a shop window. Of course, a walk through the Hofbrauhaus is good fun, and a walk will do it- it is large, there is an Oompah band, a Stammtisch (an official 'regular table') of robust and pleasingly ham-like men in Lederhosen and blue checked shirts (do they pay them?), and beers so enormous you are slaked just looking at them. And of course more drunken teenagers. Don't forget to glance up at the soaring ceiling with Bavarian motif. By now I'm famished, and wander back to my restaurant, which is even cozier than before. I order something off the traditional portion of the menu and am brought some melting roast pork topped with a hand-sized deep-fried pork crackling so crunchy it could be from a chuchifrtto shop on Rivington Street (near Sammy's Romanian, actually), a rich sauce, and two different kinds of dumplings. I order a dark Weissbier, which I should have thought an oxymoron, and it is perfect. I eat a third of my lovely rib-sticking meal, all the pork crackling, drink half the beer, float back to my hotel all carbohydrate-blissed-out, pop a sleeping pill, and sleep a dreamless, fat sleep.

agent provocateur

Schubeck Schokoladen

"Coats to Measure" (really!- they've got some long dogs here.)