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dining

At the Gasthaus Bavaria on Calle 50

The place to go for sauerbraten

by Eric Jackson

I had been meaning to go there for a long time. The Gasthaus Bavaria on Calle 50 (a few blocks from its start on Via España, well before it plunges downhill into the heart of the banking district) is, after all, the closest of Panama's small collection of German restaurants to The Panama News office. Plus, I had heard some good things about it.

I didn't check out the atmospherics of the bar, or of the downstairs dining room where smoking is allowed. I came for dinner, encountered an old friend, and sat down in the non-smoking section just inside the door. And although it may be that the bar or the other dining room present a different ambience, this is not a place to go for the decor, or for German music in any of its genres, or for rosy-cheeked waitresses decked out in a retro-Munich tradition. The food and the beer are this establishment's attractions.

And how attractive they are!

As in a selection of beers that, notwithstanding superseding European Union regulations, conforms to the 14th century German beer purity law. You can order from the tap, by the glass or by the huge stein that serves as a pitcher (this is October at a Germanic institution that dispenses beer). Or, like me, you can get something more special that comes in a bottle --- maybe something a bit darker, and hoppier. For all I know you might be able to order Cerveza Atlas, or some American product with sugar and preservatives. I don't know because I didn't ask. Even the most irreverent journalist needs to know when it's not the time for a rude question, and this was one of those occasions.

I might have eaten healthy, taking my paunch and my vulnerability to gout attacks into account. There are salad and seafood selections for those who take better care of themselves than I do, and some day I will return and sample one or more of these. But on this night I was out for heavier classical German fare, though it might imply that I'd have to slug down some herbal tea to clear out the purines later.

How classically German? Well, not with the sound of Herbert von Karajan conducting Richard Wagner, as I have noted, nor even against a techno-pop background. Classically German as in starting out with a little bowl of cream of mushroom soup, then getting into the main fare of sauerbraten, spiced red cabbage and freshly made spatzen.

If all you know about cream of mushroom soup is Cambell's you have not been exposed to the good stuff. You don't understand? Go to this place and order cream of mushroom soup and you will. I didn't watch them cook it, but I would imagine that it started out by frying up the mushrooms with a little bit of bacon, then thickening it with a bit of flour and maybe some other ingredients, then thinning it with enough liquid to simmer it and unify the ingredients' flavors, then adding the cream close to the end. Maybe my reverse production is all wrong, but I am not wrong about how good their simple little mushroom soup is.

Then came the main event, the slices of beef cooked tender in a slightly sour sauce, with bowls of spaetzle, the German home-style fresh noodles, and of red cabbage, on the side.

You tell good sauerbraten from haphazard pretensions by the flavor and texture. It's beef that's well done but tender, with the flavor completely permeating the meat. You can't do this by taking some thin slices of beef and tossing them in the microwave with a bit of sauce or worse yet by nuking the beef and then pouring the sauce on top. This is meat that has been simmered, and I would expect marinated as well. Knowing the ways that modern restaurants work I'd expect that there had been some food prep work, but this was not mass production fare.

The cabbage had just a bit of vinegar, and was that allspice? I can't identify the spice with any certainty, because this red vegetable's flavor was subtly enhanced, not overpowered, by the stuff they added to it. As it should have been.

And the noodles! Maybe my appreciation for this simple wonder of life is a genetic legacy, something else from the Teutonic part of my ancestry to balance off the manic depressive tendencies. And here they give you ample sauce with the sauerbraten to flavor the spatzen as well.

(Good home-style German noodles with a little bit of butter, gravy or sauce are one of the low-budget luxuries that every cultured world citizen who's scraping by in a time of poverty ought to know. If your poverty rations come from only one culture, an unbalanced diet will be the likely result. But if you appreciate the cheap staples of many nations, and take advantage of those local fruits and veggies that are in season, you will live much better than your unicultural neighbors in the same economic predicament.)

Dining at the Gasthaus Bavaria is several times more costly than doing so at McDonald's. The meal I have described, plus several large bottles of premium imported German beer, cost about $20. Now isn't it wonderful living in a city where many of the inhabitants consider that “expensive?”

If you have any appreciation at all for German food, or if you have never experienced it and want to know the real thing, put this restaurant on your list of places to visit.