This week I’m in Berlin Germany for a business trip and yet sadly, I’ve been unable to find some schwenker yet. For those unfamiliar with what a schwenker is (which was me as well about 10 minutes ago), a schwenker is essentially a grill which originated from the German state of Saarland. How it works? Well, the Schwenkermeister erects his schwenker…<cough> over a campfire and suspends a grill on a chain attached to the tip of it. Confused? I think this needs a drawing for those of you whose minds went right to the gutter after reading that last sentence.
So now you get it, right? It’s a metal tripod and the meat cooks on the grill suspended from the tripod. I suppose I could have just written it that way but it was so much more fun to take you guys into the gutter with me. I am planning to ask around today to see if there’s a good schwenker place anywhere close by, but I think this may be an elusive type of thing that true Schwenkermeisters (in North America that’d roughly translate to grill master) only cook out in the country under an open fire. But fingers crossed.
Now in the meantime to tide you all over, I do have a pic of what I ordered at a Tapas place last night. The place is called Mar Y Sol and the food was quite good. Not knowing what it included, I ordered the ‘meat platter for two’ figuring that description was all I needed to know. I was right. It was great and featured some steak strips, lamb chops, chicken and sausages. There were some ‘filler’ veggies on there as well but I didn’t waste my time on those distractions. Most of the meat was prepared on a gas grill. I enjoyed this with some sangria to wash it down and cool me from the meat sweats that came on pretty strong at about the 35 minute mark. The best part about this whole meal though, was that they brought out props prior to delivering the platter of meat. You always know it’s going to be a good meal when they have to pre-deliver some tools to make sure you are able to get the job done (think about when you order lobster and they have to come out and give you a bib, some cracking tools etc.). They brought out the obvious steak knife, BUT the best thing was this special two-level box with candles lit on the first level to ensure my meat platter stayed hot on the second level. That’s just smart, enabled me to take my time and acted almost as a stage complete with floor lighting to properly display my meat. Very cool.
But back to the world of grilling - I had a great conversation at lunch time yesterday with two Russians, a Spaniard and a German about the predominant use of charcoal on this side of the Atlantic. They explained that gas grills are just not present here except maybe in restaurants. Everyone either uses a charcoal grill or hibatchi and if they are city dwellers and don’t have the ability to use charcoal due to the smoke, they just use tiny electric grills as a last resort. Propane, is not really considered a cooking gas here at all.
Anyway, all that to say that I still have a few more nights in Berlin before I fly back to Canada, and I’ll see if I can track down some good schwenker before I head back. Stay tuned!
P.S. If anyone knows a good place where I should go, please post a comment here or on the Manuel Grilling Facebook page.
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