Restaurant: Fest
Location: Parsons Green
By Boeing: 1635 miles
By Boris Bike: 4 miles
I can see Angela Merkel feeling quite at ease in Parsons Green with its yummy mummy affluence, trendy wine bars and tweedy trim residents on loan from the Cotswolds. She may buy a slim volume of Bertolt Brecht from one of the many coffee-house-cum-bookshops or purchase a charming hand-carved wooden toy for a god-niece in Schleswig-Holstein. Having expelled a good many calories browsing bookshelves and test driving hobby horses she would no doubt be feeling hungry.
Not wanting to give any more of her money to Greece she may pass the Taverna by and thinking wistfully of home see the welcoming Teutonic text of Fest a few yards up the street towards Putney. But as she walked through the doors her jovial amiability would turn to abject horror and slack-jawed disgust. If it was a parody she may have laughed, relishing the opportunity to dispel the myth that the Germans have no sense of humour, but this beerkeller restaurant is meant to be authentic. It is a replica of such poor taste that the UN may have to pass a resolution to get it closed immediately for fear of diplomatic reprisals.
Fest bills itself as London’s Oktoberfest venue, a place where every night is a dark, drunken October night: where you can drink weissbeer and eat wursts without the aid of easy-jet or a weekend to spare. It sounds like genius: take a concept many men travel a thousand miles for once a year and offer it to them on their doorstep every evening of the week. Throw in some National Lampoon’s European Adventure kitsch, high trousers and low blouses and it could be a riot. Simple: the job is, as the mockneys say, a goodun’.
But as soon as I walked to the bar it was evident that it wasn’t as simple as i’d assumed. Rather than be greeted by Greta I was served by a Sheila. As Australian as Ayers rock, trussed up as a latterday Heidi in a threadbare costume that looked like it was bought from e-bay. My excitement evaporated in an instant. I looked around the room. It was basically a Walkabout bar but with less Germans. A Korean couple sat in awkward silence in the corner and some brash aussies played pool in an anteroom. The only hint of anything Germanic were lines of promotional flyers from German breweries strung across the room like tawdry Bavarian bunting.
To lift my spirits I ordered a Stein of larger, one of those two pint glasses that are so heavy you need to be arm-wrestling champion to lift them. I chose a dark German larger but was met with a blank expression. “Is that Ok?” i asked. “ Sure darl’, its just no-one has ever ordered that one before” came the response. If I wasn’t shaking my head at that point I was a second later when over her eyes I saw a rack of pork scratching sachets.
I sat down on a bench at a vast table. This, like many of the restaurants on this journey, is designed as a party venue. My beer was as rough as rusty nails, the so called ‘treacle tones’ tasting more like burnt anchovy. For a starter I ordered a Beer Ring sausage, one of the emblems of the beer festival. After several minutes I saw the faux-fraulein scamper from the kitchen with a squat sausage. She was wearing pink Reebok pump trainers.
Awaiting my main course I considered the contrast between how we view French and German cultures and cuisines. Some of the best food in London is French and by this showing some of the worst is German. It is almost a national badge of honour to mistrust and misjudge all things German. We all have a little empathy with the Colonel in Fawlty Towers, even after all these years, even after Germany has blossomed into one of the most sophisticated and accomplished countries in the world. For some reason we just can’t embrace their culture as we can French, Spanish and Italian.
But I thought this was changing, the charming Christmas markets that spring up across the capitol in the winter are exciting and evocative. We welcome the rustic Germany of the Brothers Grimm, but only, it seems, on a seasonal basis. For the rest of the year we rarely give Germany a second thought. If we sought out the best of Germany, even in its seemingly bland cuisine, we may just appreciate a European neighbour. To say Fest represents Germany is insulting, like handing Ken Hom a six figure salary and making him head chef of a restaurant named Ho-Li-Fuk.
For a main course I chose the Schwinehaxen, a smoked pork knuckle smothered in mustard on a bed of sauerkraut. If I closed my eyes perhaps I could be looking out over rolling fields and forest from the turret of one of King Ludwig’s fairy-tale castles. But no, my eyes focused on the menu that featured the exciting ‘double knuckle challenge’. It was helpfully explained that this was only for ‘those who genuinely love pork knuckles’. The prize was to go on a wall of fame for those who have eaten two pork knuckles. I felt my soul shrivel and exit my body through my mustard inflamed nostrils. I can imagine walking past this address in a years time and finding a Korean karaoke. It is a room for hire to a country with the lowest bid.
