# Why are German restaurants not more popular in the US? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 31, 2016, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256 "2016-10-31T14:11:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/81 "2016-11-01T13:37:38Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > What kind of sushi is common and popular in Israel? Is it mostly Med fish (and which ones), or others? Tuna and salmon, just like everywhere else. The tuna’s probably imported; the salmon definitely is. You also get the occasional local fish like the popular gilt-head bream. Israeli sushi, in my experience, tends to be more traditional and less creative than what you find in the United States. Fewer California rolls and more basic tuna maki combos. ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/82 "2016-11-01T13:56:55Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > Ok, I have to clear up some things here. As I’ve said here before, I’m the Germanest German at this board, was born and raised in a typical rural region sticking to traditional food, and indeed **Icarus** is spot-on with the meat, potato and vegetable thing. My mother got her cooking clues from her mother and maybe a bit from her mother-in-law, and when I was a kid in the seventies, that was the usual course: cutlet with salt potatos and kohlrabi, meatballs (Frikadellen or as we said, Gehacktesbällchen) with baked potatoes and savoy cabbage, Rouladen with salt potatoes and beans, Sauerbraten with dumplings (Kloeße) and red cabbage, I could go on and on. That WAS standard food, and it was kinda awful. But something like a casserole was already exotic, though of course a stew was allowed (that inevitably contained meat, potatoes and vegetables). I don’t want to diss my mother’s cooking skille, bless her heart, she cooked those things quite well, but it was sometimes bland and quite unimaginative. Fortunately, the Italian influence was present early, and the exceptions were often Italian pasta. It was a BIG thing when my mother cooked her first lasagna for us (and frankly, it was the best lasagna I’ve ever had :)). My sister and I pushed our mother to be more experimental in her cooking when we became older, and the food became more variable (to my father’s chagrin, who was programmed in his youth to that meat/potato/vegetable thing). After we kids left the house long, long ago, my mother returned to the traditional style, and my Dad is content again. I’m British and, barring a few variations in meat cuts and vegetable choices, you’ve just described my upbringing. Well, except we also had indian curries thrown in with Italian dishes to my Mum’s repertoire. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/83 "2016-11-01T14:15:52Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Sure they do. There’s at least a few dozen Polish restaurants around here, plus Bohemian, Lithuanian (OK, that’s Baltic, not Slavic), as well as Scandinavian and British and Irish. We have most of those in the Twin Cities as well. Good German food - including a family owned chain of German bar/restaurants. A great Polish place. A Russian place with good food and a HUGE vodka selection - plus Russian pop music. Some food has become popular restaurant food because its pretty cheap to make profitable. Mexican, Chinese, Italian - you can have a night out with family or friends and not have blown the entire monthly budget. German is meat heavy and imported beer heavy - it tends to be a little more expensive. And German immigrants tended to be farmers - not shopkeepers or restaurant owners. The restaurants that did arrive with immigration were - well, brew pubs in a 19th and 20th century way. The ones that made it through anti German sentiment during WWI (those in German communities) didn’t make it through Prohibition. Although there are little towns throughout the upper Midwest where a cafe will serve a few German items. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/84 "2016-11-01T14:32:28Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > And German immigrants tended to be farmers - not shopkeepers or restaurant owners. Those who had the entrepreneurial spirit opened delicatessens rather than restaurants. People today tend to think of delis as Jewish or Italian, but they originated in Germany; _delicatessen_ is a German loanword. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/85 "2016-11-01T14:37:33Z")
There’s a truly wonderful German bakery “Heidelberg Pastry Shop” here in Arlington, run by a German immigrant baker. The best bakery in the area that I’m aware of (and there’s a lot of competition around DC). ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/86 "2016-11-01T14:42:39Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > We have most of those in the Twin Cities as well. Good German food - including a family owned chain of German bar/restaurants. A great Polish place. A Russian place with good food and a HUGE vodka selection - plus Russian pop music. > > Some food has become popular restaurant food because its pretty cheap to make profitable. Mexican, Chinese, Italian - you can have a night out with family or friends and not have blown the entire monthly budget. German is meat heavy and imported beer heavy - it tends to be a little more expensive. > > And German immigrants tended to be farmers - not shopkeepers or restaurant owners. The restaurants that did arrive with immigration were - well, brew pubs in a 19th and 20th century way. The ones that made it through anti German sentiment during WWI (those in German communities) didn’t make it through Prohibition. Although there are little towns throughout the upper Midwest where a cafe will serve a few German items. If you’re talking about Nye’s in the first paragraph, that place apparently closed down earlier this year. ☹ I also surmise that it follows immigration patterns. Ethnic restaurants tend to be run by recent immigrants or one generation removed from immigration, from my experience, and cater to populations that both include the local and immigrant populations. As immigrant waves die down, so do the restaurants. Chicagoland still has a good number of German restaurants, but nowhere near as many as they used to as we’ve been a few generations removed from strong German immigration here. Polish restaurants are still alive and relatively well (although my neighborhood joints have moved or closed as the Poles migrated out of the neighborhood) since there’s still plenty of new Poles and Eastern Europeans coming to Chicago. Hungarian restaurants, for instance, have no presence in Chicago because there was never a significant Hungarian population here (there is a patch, though). I think it’s a cuisine that should do well in the area, and a couple spring up here and there every so often, but there’s just not enough marketing and Hungarian population to help make it successful. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/87 "2016-11-01T15:31:25Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > Several of Houston’s European Ethnic neighborhoods (never very large) were broken up by freeway construction in the 50’s & 60’s. The Germans, Poles, Italians, etc., headed for the 'burbs. I suspect that even by then, the Central European immigrants had long since assimilated into mainstream white Texan culture. I descend from German immigrants to Galveston in the 1840s, and they were pretty much assimilated by the turn of the century-early on, they owned the biggest beer garden in the city, and they owned a butcher shop until sometime in the 20th century. But by the 1920s, everyone was just as white as everyone else; my grandmother, who still has the original German last name as the 1840 immigrant, has no German recipes or anything culturally interesting from those days, and nor do/did her siblings. Out in the Hill Country and out to the west (Weimar, Schulenburg, Bastrop, et al), the German communities were more insular and kept more of the heritage, etc… but not in Houston/Galveston. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/88 "2016-11-01T15:31:57Z")
Polish? - no I was talking about the Polish deli across the street from where Nye’s used to be. It did close earlier this year, but I never thought of it as a Polish restaurant - it was a supper club with cocktails. (The deli is Ukaraian in name, but does a lot of Polish food as well as other East European.) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/89 "2016-11-01T15:47:39Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > Polish? - no I was talking about the Polish deli across the street from where Nye’s used to be. It did close earlier this year, but I never thought of it as a Polish restaurant - it was a supper club with cocktails. > > (The deli is Ukaraian in name, but does a lot of Polish food as well as other East European.) The time I visited Nye’s, it definitely had all the Polish standards on it: golabki, pierogi, pork chops, herring, Polish-style spare ribs, Polish sausage, pickled beets, potato pancakes, sauerkraut, etc., as well as standard supper club fare. I also remember it being pricey for Polish food. It’s pretty typical around here to have Eastern European ethnic restaurants have non-ethnic things like shrimp cocktail and burgers and the such on the menu. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/90 "2016-11-01T16:47:44Z")
**Bump** : Bill & Cheryl Jamieson’s TEXAS HOME COOKING (1993) is still one of my favorite cookbooks. In addition to in-depth analyses of sonofabitch stew, cowboy beans, beef barbecue, chili, and Tex-Mex, it contains many recipes of German and Bohemian descent, in honor of all the Central European immigrants. That book taught me how to make very good chicken and dumplings, a dish more people would associate with Pennsylvania Dutch country than Texas. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/91 "2016-11-01T19:09:36Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > Presumably the same as the lack of interest in British, Scandinavian, Polish and Russian cuisine. Grim, gray gruel. If you think Polish or any other Slavic-type food is “grim, gray gruel” then I feel really, really sorry for you. Pierogies, halushki, paczki, kolachi, nut roll, saurkraut soup, paska bread, klusky noodles, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/92 "2016-11-01T21:51:54Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > If you think Polish or any other Slavic-type food is “grim, gray gruel” then I feel really, really sorry for you. Pierogies, halushki, paczki, kolachi, nut roll, saurkraut soup, paska bread, klusky noodles, etc. You forgot bureks and czernina. 😉 Milwaukee also has two great Slavic restaurants, and some good Polish ones too. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/93 "2016-11-01T22:06:13Z")
Polish/Ukraine/Russian pierogies cranked out by the thousands for annual fundraiser! I don’t know how those old bats get them so thin (someone said they get -shhh!! - sheets of eggroll wrappers and use them for the pierogies. I never said a word!) Potato, potato and cheese, sauerkraut, mushroom. With tons of sauteed onions and sour cream! I just use Mrs. T’s or the store brand, but cook extra mushrooms, or sauerkraut, or whatever. there is a stall at the Farmers Market here that has over a dozen kinds of pierogies. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/94 "2016-11-01T22:12:48Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > You forgot bureks and czernina. 😉 > > Milwaukee also has two great Slavic restaurants, and some good Polish ones too. Mmm…burek. While we’re going in the Balkan direction of Slavic, there’s cevapcici with ajvar and/or kajmak, too. I might steer the newbies away from czernina (Polish side of Slavic), though. 🙂 You know, I’m 41 years old, grew up in a Polish family and had almost nothing but Polish food growing up, but I never had czernina. I do remember delivering jars of duck blood to my neighbor across the alley for it, though. I guess it’s just something my parents never ate. We had plenty of kiszka, though (blood sausage). ---
**Author:** ![Idle\_Thoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@Idle\_Thoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idle_Thoughts)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2016, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/95 "2016-11-01T23:31:14Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Had she, she wouldn’t’ve lasted past 81, and my namesake not past 97. We die early as a service to the world, given the 20th century. It is against the rules to change quotes like you did there, **dropzone** , so don’t do it again, please. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2016, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/96 "2016-11-02T02:54:19Z")
Kansas City used to have a very good German restaurant, the\* Berliner Bear.\* It was my favorite place to go when I was a kid for my birthday, and I still remember the waitress Helga teaching me how to Polka, my feet dangling somewhere near Helga’s knees, my face buried in her very substantial bosom. But back in 2007, the son of the owners, who had taken over the restaurant after his father had died and his mother had succumbed to Alzheimer’s, hosted a group of German culture enthusiasts. Complete with swastikas. They had a run-in at the airport with a local Rabbi, [the whole thing appeared in the paper](http://www.pitch.com/news/article/20607309/springtime-for-hitler) and the place never recovered. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2016, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/97 "2016-11-02T16:07:31Z")
We went to a German restaurant in Fredericksburg, VA not too long ago. While the food was tasty, I do recall it being heavy and starchy, and after the meal, I just felt like assuming the couch potato position to digest. As I don’t drink beer and I’m not a huge fan of sausages, I doubt I’d patronize a German restaurant regularly. Nothing to do with politics, everything to do with personal preferences. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2016, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/98 "2016-11-02T17:16:22Z")
I’d hate to be called a sexist, but German food IS kinda…boy food. Very few of my female friends jump at a chance to stuff themselves with sausages, dumplings, fermented cabbage, and beer. DAD: "Where shall we go for dinner tonight? How about the Scheisskopf von Beethoven Weinstube? MOM: “No.” ---
**Author:** ![BeeGee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b5a626/32.png) [@BeeGee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeeGee)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2016, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/99 "2016-11-02T17:54:08Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I suspect that even by then, the Central European immigrants had long since assimilated into mainstream white Texan culture. > > I descend from German immigrants to Galveston in the 1840s, and they were pretty much assimilated by the turn of the century-early on, they owned the biggest beer garden in the city, and they owned a butcher shop until sometime in the 20th century. > > But by the 1920s, everyone was just as white as everyone else; my grandmother, who still has the original German last name as the 1840 immigrant, has no German recipes or anything culturally interesting from those days, and nor do/did her siblings. > > Out in the Hill Country and out to the west (Weimar, Schulenburg, Bastrop, et al), the German communities were more insular and kept more of the heritage, etc… but not in Houston/Galveston. I’ll never forget visiting my friend’s family in Bremond in the 80’s and listening to him, his sister, and his mother argue in Polish over how the car got scraped up. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2016, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256/100 "2016-11-02T17:58:05Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > I’d hate to be called a sexist, but German food IS kinda…boy food. > > Very few of my female friends jump at a chance to stuff themselves with sausages, dumplings, fermented cabbage, and beer. Sounds like you need to find better female friends. 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-german-restaurants-not-more-popular-in-the-us/770256.md?page=6)