A Little Bit of Germany in Japan

Lieske Leynen — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 03:33:23 +0000

When you live abroad, one of the many things you miss is food. Not food in general. By no means are you going to starve in Japan, but you miss the food you had back home. Things that had been easy to come by but aren’t any more. Being a little bit of a food freak, I found a lot of ways to get to the things I was craving. I have paid a small fortune at import stores for Haribo and a vast variety of cheeses. I have ordered salsa and oatmeal online and ignored how much extra I was paying for shipping. However, my favorite way of enjoying the food I miss is by finding authentic foreign restaurants.
Over time I have learned that finding a real foreign restaurant is hard to do, excluding the massive amount of international fast food chains. There have been countless times when I have walked into a restaurant that advertised itself as a “foreign” only to discover that they have change all of the standard dishes to accommodate Japanese taste. I was once served a pizza that had a raw egg on it and wondered how Italian that was, but I shrugged it off. It was not stranger than my favorite pizza place in Korea where they insisted on putting corn in everything they served me.
It makes sense for the restaurants to change their recipes to accommodate local taste, since if they didn’t they would have a much harder time staying in business. But I still get a little disappointed though when I walk into a restaurant hoping for Mexican food or Indian food and I end up with Japanese Mexican food and Japanese Indian food.
That is why I take careful notes on what restaurants are the most accurate in their claims of selling authentic foreign food. So far I have found a great Italian restaurant in Nagoya, a fantastic Indian place in Takamatsu, and my latest find and new favorite, a German bar in Tokyo.
Having grown up in Germany, I have always loved German food. That was why when I was walking through Roppongi with a friend, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the sign for Bernd’s Bar. It was closed but would open for dinner that night serving real German food. So I pestered my friend until she agreed to eat there. Good German food is hard to come by outside of Germany and I wanted to see what this place had to offer. I knew then that this meal would either be the best or worst one I would have during my trip to Tokyo. I was hoping for the best.
After touring around some other spots in Tokyo, we returned to Roppongi and found Bernd’s Bar again. It was on the second floor of the building and there was German decoration along the stairway. There was a “D” sticker on every step like the ones I had seen in the back windows of cars growing up. The “D” stood for Deutschland and the place was feeling very authentic already. The inside of the restaurant reminded me of a Zum Schwannstein, a small family run restaurant I had gone to a lot as a child. There was a bar where man sat and drank while telling each other stories and there were tables where small and large groups sat, chatting away in English, German, and Japanese.
When we walked through the door, a nice gentleman gave up his seat at the bar for us. We sat down and stared at the menu for a long time. My friend, having never eaten German food, didn’t know what to eat, and me, not being one to consume alcohol very often, didn’t know what to drink.
After a long while, the man who gave up his seat returned and asked with a smile, “The ladies don’t drink or they do not know what to order yet?”
I realized then that this man was probably Bernd and told him we needed a little more time. Eventually, we did order. Since I don’t drink much beer, I forgot the name of what I was drinking. I just know that as far as beer goes, it was really good. Then came the food. This is what I had been waiting for all day. Not being able to decide on what to get, my friend and I decided to order two dishes and share. We got the Wiener Schnitzel (Vienna Schnitzel) and the Jaeger Schnitzel (Mushroom Cream Schnitzel).
Having been in Japan for over a year, I have come to expect small portions when I eat out. That was why I was so surprised when they delivered two large plates stacked with food. We ate all of it even though we were full about half way through. The schnitzels were fantastic, but my favorite was the homemade noodles that came with the Jaeger Schnitzel.
The trilingual staff was amazing and they made eating at the restaurant feel like eating at a friend’s house. Even Bernd came over to talk to us for a while. He was a real German from Baden Baden. But all good things have to come to an end. After we finished our meal, we had to head back to the hotel to pack. As we left, Bernd wished us a safe trip home and said to come back the next time we were in Tokyo and I’m sure I will.
So if you are hungry for a home-cooked German meal, want to try real German food for the first time, or just want to go someplace really friendly and welcoming, check out Bernd’s Bar in Roppongi. Their website also comes in three languages and has an excellent map. http://www.berndsbar.com/

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A Little Bit of Germany in Japan