Dining Out and In

We've been living in Frankfurt for nearly 11 months now and the girls and I are anxiously anticipating our trip back to the U.S. this Friday. We're going to Elmhurst for a week and to our cottages in upstate NY for 3 weeks and we can't wait to see friends and family. But, we've also spent a lot of time talking about the various restaurants we want to visit while we're in the States and so, I can't help thinking about the differences in our dining habits since we've moved to Germany.

In the U.S., I didn't cook at home nearly as often as I do here. Certainly a part of the reason for that was the girls' busy schedules with sports and after-school activities that left little time some nights for eating dinner, never mind cooking it. But, part of the reason we ate our more in the U.S. was that we like to eat out and there's no shortage of fairly inexpensive, family-style restaurants to choose from. That is definitely not the case here.

Over the past 11 months, I don't think we went out to eat more than twice a month on average, except when we were on a trip somewhere. In fact, I got a coupon for four dinners out for a birthday gift in September and I'm not sure I even used up all my choices. Whenever we've had company visit us, we've taken them out to eat, and always first to the little Pakistani/German restaurant and biergarten across the street from our house. They've gotten to know us now, even though there's still quite a language barrier, and even wave when they see us in our driveway.

But mostly we eat in now. By the time the girls get home from school, it's between 5 and 6:30 p.m., depending on whether they have sports or not. They have homework to do and it's usually too time-consuming to go out. Especially since the dh is rarely home before 7 p.m. So, I do a lot more cooking than I ever think I've done before and I've even instituted the Sunday night dinner plan. Each week, one of the girls is in charge of planning and cooking dinner on Sunday and has to tell me by the previous Wednesday what they need me to buy for their meal. We rotate each week and it's been working out nicely.

Dining out here is just so different. Certainly, it takes longer, which is why we really can't go out on a school night. But even beyond that, there are a lot of differences. Often when we enter a popular restaurant between 6 and 7 p.m., there are many empty tables but we can't be seated because all the tables are reserved. And the reserved sign often indicates the time of the reservation - sometimes as late as 8:30 or 9 p.m. We can sometimes squeeze in by convincing the host that, as Americans, we'll eat quickly and leave the table long before the party who has reserved it arrives. Typically, Germans eat later than we normally do and they linger. There's no such thing as a second seating - when you're seated at a table, it's yours for the duration. In fact, for lunch, there is one seating and if the restaurant is full, they'll turn you away at the door. There's no second seating at lunch either, because the restaurants often close mid-afternoon and then open again for dinner.

If you can get a table, you have to decide if you want to sit inside or out. Sidewalk cafes and outdoor tables are very popular - everyone seems to prefer to eat outside. For us, since we're used to air conditioned restaurants in the summer, it's often best to eat outside on the chance of catching a breeze. There will be no a/c and certainly no air movement inside. And, of course, Germany is lagging behind other EU countries in terms of smoking prohibitions, so it's always easier to breath outside as well. Nearly every restaurant has tables outside, even Subway and McDonald's. Although at a more fast-food type of restaurant or cafe, the outside tables might be chest-high w/no chairs - just made to stand at while you eat your food.

From what we've seen, there are basically only two types of restaurants here. You can choose very fast food - McDonald's, a Donner/gyros stand with a couple of tables, a bakery that makes their rolls into sandwiches at lunch time, or a sausage stand where you get a foot-long sausage with a 2-inch roll at the center that's mostly a way to hold the sausage. Or you can choose a more elaborate, sit-down, dinner-takes-a-couple-of-hours-at-least-and-isn't-cheap restaurant. But what really seems to be missing is the TGIFriday's, Denny's, Friendly's type of family sit-down restaurant where you can get a fairly inexpensive meal in a decent amount of time. There's a Pizza Hut not too far from us and that's as close as we've found to a family style restaurant. The Pakistani/German restaurant across the street is family-owned and operated, and very hospitable to our kids and the family we bring to eat there, but it's not the same. Most of the non-fast food restaurants we've tried have had good food and a nice atmosphere, but they are more expensive than a simple dinner out would be in the U.S., so we don't do it often.

My last dinig-related observations deal with dogs. It's still somewhat surprising to me to walk into one of these nice restaurants and have to step over or around a dog that's lying next to your table. Dogs seem to be welcome pretty much everywhere and we've seen a lot of them in restaurants. Dogs, mind you, but not doggy bags, as they don't exist. You don't take home the part of your meal you didn't eat. I suppose if you brought a Tupperware dish with you and stuck it in your purse, you could do it. But the restaurant certainly isn't going to provide you with a doggie bag.

After a month in the U.S., it'll be interesting to come back and give some thought to the things that seemed weird to us at restaurants in the States - like suddenly getting big glasses, filled w/ice, and free refills. I'm interested to see how many differences I notice, but I'm also really looking forward to trying some of our all-time favorites at the places we used to love.