ETA: This is directed to Athena.
I would say it’s the garlic and oregano primarily. Most American-Greek cuisine I’ve had tends to be pretty heavy on both. Oh, and perhaps olive oil. For example, with the people I’ve heard complaining about a traditional tomato sauce being bland, it’s usually because it’s light in garlic (or has no garlic) and/or oregano. People, yes there is such a thing as “too much garlic.” Balance, folks, balance.
I saw the thread title and figured in by now someone would have mentioned Milwaukee. I see several people have. One nitpick though, the Bavarian Inn just closed a few weeks ago.
I feel like a bad Milwaukee citizen. I don’t think I’ve been to any of these restaurants. The other thing I’ve been meaning to do is get to a real Serb place and try a real burek. I found some really really good frozen ones (made locally in South Milwaukee). I’d like to try some made in a restaurant.
I don’t like German restaurants (at least the ones I’ve tried, some of which are highly rated in restaurant guides and yelp) because…they’re bland. Not as in the stereotype, “German food is bland”, but as in, this food, here, on my plate, that you just served me, is bland.
I grew up eating Grandma’s sauerbraten. Restaurant sauerbraten makes me sad and nostalgic, not happy. Ditto the sauerkraut, the red cabbage (I don’t think they put a thing in it except vinegar and sugar…that’s not red cabbage, that’s cooked coleslaw!), even the sausages. And the spaetzle…don’t get me started on the spaetzle. Making play doh worms and boiling it does not count.
I love German food. I do not love German Restaurant food. German Restaurant food is to German food what Cozy Corner Spaghetti and Meatballs is to Italian food. Reminiscent, yes, but…bland.
pulykamell, I’d love some suggestions, but if they serve food like Brauhaus and Laschett’s, I’m gonna be sad again.
ralph, there’s this place, but it doesn’t look very promising.
Oh, and there’s Doyle’s in JP. They used to have a German plate, maybe as a special. Not the best German food ever, but if you’re really jonesing, it’s passable.
If you don’t like Laschet’s then I can’t help you. That’s my benchmark and most closely resembles the food I’ve eaten throughout Germany, both in restaurants and at friends’ houses. You might want to try Resi’s Bierstube in the same neighborhood, but if you don’t like Laschet’s, I’m not sure you’ll like it any more.
Well…I will admit that the only time I’ve been at Laschet’s, I was in a bad mood and they had far more business than they could handle, so maybe my meal was flavored with grump. I’ll give them another try sometime, 'cause I know you know your food! 
German restaurants in the 60s and 70s always depended too much on atmosphere. Probably because they felt sheepish about the cooking. When the atmosphere got corny and stodgy, all they had left was cooking they felt sheepish about.
Also, let’s not forget, being German is still tough for an American to be proud of. That culture of beer gardens, Kaffeeklatsches, and such took some serious hits as a result of 2 world wars and the removal of the language from public use. Most of us (I’m 1/4 German myself) are thoroughly deculturated by now.
Well, you also have a very close personal connection with your grandmother’s cooking, so you may be setting yourself up for a little bit of disappointment if you’re expecting it to taste just like grandma’s food. That said, there are certain things I haven’t been able to find in the States that I miss from Germany. For example, a simple Thuringer Rostbratwurst (not to be confused with the smoked sausage known as a Thuringer.) God damn, if I could just find one place that makes this fantastic sausage, I’d be in heaven. It’s gotten to the point that I’ve devised my own recipe and make my own Thuringer bratwurst based on my memories of it (which I’m sure have shifted over time), but it would be nice to find someone who sells them. That particular bratwurst has spoiled for all bratwursts.
There’s loads of them in Germany. I don’t think there’s any danger of German cuisine vanishing.
There is an excellent German/Austrian restaurant called Dano’s basically surrounded by vineyards and nothing else on one of the Finger Lakes (Seneca). I went there once, and it was one of the most memorable meals of my life. We had about 50 people, the restaurant to ourselves, split in to tables of eight or so. Everything was served family style and shared. Each table got about ten different salads and appetizers, several meat entrees, and eight to ten different sides, followed by one of everything on the dessert menu. With several liters of wine. Highlights included the roast pork and chicken (both done very simply but cooked perfectly), saurkraut with bacon, red cabbage braised in duck fat, and smoked trout with beet salad. Fabulous. Glad I didn’t pay for it.
Amusing anecdote:
About ten years ago I was on Cape Cod with my then-GF. We drove past an authentic Austrian bakery/cafe. My GF swooned as she remembered the wonderful foods that she had when she lived in Austria. She especially remembered a particular kind of rye bread that is authentically Austrian and particularly heavenly with a bit of butter.
She got me so excited about it that we decided to make a special trip there one afternoon and indulge in this amazing bit of ambrosia. We didn’t see that bread on the menu, so we asked the owner for it specifically. He ended up bringing us a couple of slices of cold bread from a plastic bag.
As it turns out, all of the “authentic” “Austrian” baked goods came from the bakery section of the local Stop & Shop. And the owner, while clearly Austrian, was no baker. He could barely heat a hot dog.
There was a bin of mozartkugeln, though.
I remember on Tim Allen’s old Home Improvement series there was a running joke about getting indigestion, gas, and Heartburn from the occasional trips to Hammtramck for Polish Food. Digestive properties not usually associated with “bland” food.
Bland infers lack of flavor. There is usually no lack of flavor in central and eastern European foods, they however might be characterized as “heavy” or “filling”, which is sort of to be expected with a “hardy” environment that has a clear winter and changing of seasons unlike the Southern mediterranean environments, that has dictated for centuries the type and availability of foods.
Sure it is, it’s associated very frequently with cheap, high fiber fare such as beans, cabbage, cole slaw, whole grains and similar. All of which can be very bland.
My patients complain bitterly of their bland, gas and cramp producing high fiber diet.
Sure it can, for the reasons Qadgop mentions, but also, Polish food does tend to be greasy, what with all the bacon fat and lard in the traditional dishes that are straight from the farm where a heavy caloric load was important. Those sorts of things are also often associated with heartburn, too.
I don’t doubt that, but if you ever saw Anthony Bourdain’s trip to Polonia Restaurantin Hamtrammck I would deduce the heartburn and indigestion would be from all of the highly spiced, garlicky, and acidic sauces and sausages and all of the pork fat.
Thanks, pulykamell. Now you’ve got me wanting to go the Resi’s Bierstube’s beer garden to enjoy our (hopefully warmer) weather this weekend.
I can’t help but wonder if the decline of German restaurants has something to do with the end of conscription in the US.
The two great waives of German immigration in this very German (and Norwegian and Czech) part of the Midwest were in the years just before the American Civil War and following the Revolutions of 1848 and then again following the Franco-Prussian War when Prussian homogeny started to take hold in the small German states. That was what? Four or five or six generations ago? The connection to the culture and cuisine of the homeland starts dying out within a generation or so.
Since then the mass exposure of Americans to German food has been through military service in the old Federal Republic. The draft meant that a fair cross section of American youth was be exposed to German wine, beer and food. The draft is long gone (to no one’s disappointment) and exposure to foreign culture by that route is likewise greatly gone. If you were not exposed to German food it is unlikely that you will search it out.
As a side note, the restaurants at the Amana Colonies still put out a pretty good imitation of German peasant food, heavy on pork, potatoes and cabbage in all its myriad forms. The Amanas, incidentally, have nothing to do with the Amish. The Amanas were founded by a sort of Anabaptist proto-Lutheran utopian and communal sect that originated in Southwest Germany. While the communal society broke up in the Depression, the restaurants carry on the traditions of the homeland.
That’s odd. Polish food, except for some sausages and perhaps the borscht, tends not to be garlic heavy at all. Onions, yeah. Garlic, not so much. And the most typical dishes are not heavily spiced at all. I’m looking at the Polonia Restaurant menu and it looks like your standard Polish fare. Most of the stuff on that menu is not going to be spiced with much more than salt and pepper. (Yes, you might find caraway in the bread or the sauerkraut, and marjoram or dill in some of the soups or perhaps in a cream sauce. And I’m not sure I should even count parsley. But the basic Polish palate of flavors–at least the Southern Polish and Silesian food I’m most familiar with–is pretty straightforward spice wise.)
Well, I was thinking of Sausages, Pigs in the blanket, and Pierogies, specifically. That “holy trinity” would probably tend to be on the spicier, garlicky, greasier, and perhaps heartburn inducing.. side of polish cooking. That’s speaking relatively, of course.
Why have Americans declined? I went out today and didn’t see a single one. It’s a damn shame Americans have declined.