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When young lovers dream of a romantic European dinner in a back-street hideaway packed with locals, those back streets tend to be in Paris or Florence, not Düsseldorf or Nuremberg. When thrill-seeking diners book long-distance travel to taste some pathbreaking chef’s strange new inventions, their planes land in places like Barcelona or Copenhagen, not Leipzig or Dresden.
当年轻情侣梦想着在隐匿于偏僻街巷的地方与当地人挤在一起享受一顿浪漫的欧式晚餐时，那些背街深巷往往是在巴黎或佛罗伦萨，而不是杜塞尔多夫或纽伦堡。当寻求刺激的食客为了一尝某些具有开拓精神的大厨的新奇菜品而预订长途机票时，他们飞抵的目的地也是巴塞罗那或哥本哈根之类的地方，而非莱比锡或德累斯顿。
Although the 2013 Michelin Guide paid lavish attention to Germany, awarding 3 stars to 10 restaurants there, neither those restaurants nor their chefs are household names in any country but their own. When Germany flexes its economic muscle, other countries jump to attention. When it shows off its gastronomic power, they shrug.
尽管《2013年米其林指南》(2013 Michelin Guide)对德国青睐有加，将那里的10家餐厅评为三星，但一出了德国，那些店铺和它们的主厨就谈不上家喻户晓了。当德国展现自己的经济实力时，其他国家都会争先恐后地予以关注。当它展示自己的美食实力时，别人却不过是耸耸肩。
Anytime the world seems to have made a secret pact to ignore a subject, curious minds grow even more curious. So off I went last month on a brief but industrious eating tour of Germany. I traveled to three of the cities foreigners are most likely to visit, Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin, making reservations in relatively new restaurants. None of them were especially luxurious or expensive compared with the rarefied dining rooms that are catnip to the Michelin Guide.
无论何时，当全世界似乎达成了一项秘密协定，一起忽视某件事时，那些好奇心重的人就会变得愈发好奇。因此，我上个月去德国进行了一趟短暂却行程紧凑的美食之旅。我拜访了外国人最有可能去的三座城市：慕尼黑、法兰克福和柏林，预订了较新的餐厅。与《米其林指南》推荐的那些考究的餐厅相比，我选的那些地方都不太豪华，也不太昂贵。
Around the same time, my colleague Frank Bruni was pursuing a similar assignment in China, following similar rules. Unlike me, he stuck to the rules. I bent them to write about a very good meal I had in Frankfurt at Weinsinn, which opened at the end of 2009. My rationale: In its first months, Weinsinn was a wine bar, and didn’t begin to evolve into a restaurant until it hired its current chef, André Rickert, the following year.
大约同一时间，我的同事弗兰克·布鲁尼(Frank Bruni)也在中国进行类似的任务，遵循的规则大致一样。与我不同的是，他严格遵守了规则。我则有所放宽，以便能写写在法兰克福的Weinsinn餐厅享受的一顿美食。这家餐厅2009年底开业。我的理由是：在开业后的头几个月，Weinsinn还是一家葡萄酒吧，直到第二年请到了现在的大厨安德烈·里克特(André Rickert)，它才开始向餐厅转型。
ALL THE ACTION IS ON THE PLATE
出彩之处尽在餐盘之中
Mr. Rickert has a modernist’s skill set and a modernist’s talent for combining the serious and the playful. Look what he does to ratatouille. Even its fans have to admit that the dish, a lump of stewed vegetables mired in a tar pit of olive oil, is usually no great beauty. Mr. Rickert’s version is a colorful, bright, edible garden, a field of couscous across which he plants black olives, shards of feta, a bright green mound of basil ice cream and warm cherry tomatoes that dissolved into sweet pulp on my tongue like berries in a pie.
在将严肃和活泼结合起来这一点上，里克特身怀一套现代技术，也具有现代才华。看看他对蔬菜杂烩的改进吧。即便是喜欢这道菜的人也必须承认，它的卖相通常并不怎么样。这道菜是各种炖菜混在一起，埋在黏糊糊的橄榄油里。出自里克特之手的蔬菜杂烩却是一座色彩缤纷亮丽的美食园，蒸粗麦粉上点缀着黑橄榄、羊乳酪碎、一个翠绿的罗勒冰激凌球和暖色调的圣女果。在舌尖上，圣女果会融化成甜甜的果肉，犹如馅饼里的浆果。
The ingredients were strewn all across the plate, but the flavors were firmly rooted. That was the case, too, with a dessert of late-summer damson plums that appeared in three guises: stuffed into a tender dumpling, frozen into sorbet and poached with cinnamon syrup.
食材铺满了整个盘子，但却完全保持了独特的味道。还有一道甜点也是如此。它用暮夏时节的西洋李子制成，以三种形式呈现：填进细滑的布丁里、冷冻成果汁雪糕，或是炖肉桂糖浆。
Weinsinn is compact, with only 35 seats in two small dining rooms. So is Mr. Rickert’s menu of three appetizers, three main courses and three desserts. The wine list, on the other hand, goes on for page after page, although there is a simpler way. We asked the sommelier, Jens Gabelmann, to choose for us. He sized up our table at a glance and brought us just the wine we might have asked for if we had been able to put our wishes into words.
Weinsinn餐厅小巧紧凑，两片面积不大的就餐区仅能容纳35名食客。里克特的菜单也同样精巧，上面只有三道开胃菜、三道主菜和三道甜点。话说回来，酒单却是翻完一页又一页，不过倒是有种简单点的办法。我们请侍酒师延斯·加贝尔曼(Jens Gabelmann)帮忙挑选。扫了一眼我们的餐桌后，他拿来的酒正合心意，如果我们能用语言表达出来的话。
THE BEST OF A LONG-AGO EMPIRE
古老帝国的极致菜肴
Across the city is the current headquarters of Mario Lohninger, a chef who has cooked at restaurants formal (he ran the kitchen at the greatly missed Danube, in Manhattan, when it won three stars from The New York Times) and informal (after Danube closed, he founded Silk, a “bed-restaurant” in a Frankfurt nightclub where patrons wore slippers and ate lying down).
城市的另一头是马里奥·洛宁格尔(Mario Lohninger)现在的安身立命之所。洛宁格尔大厨在正儿八经的餐厅（在人们深深怀念的曼哈顿多瑙河餐厅[Danube]，他曾掌管厨房，那里当时赢得了《纽约时报》的三星评价）和轻松随意的地方（多瑙河关张后，他在法兰克福的一家夜店创立了“床式”餐吧丝绸[Silk]，那里的顾客穿着拖鞋，躺着吃东西）都掌过勺。
Three years ago he opened Lohninger in an elbow-shaped, salmon-colored building on the south bank of the Main River. The name is not egotism. This is a Lohninger family production, where Mr. Lohninger’s father works by his side in the kitchen and his mother patrols the dining room with a protective eye. When she spotted a runaway squiggle of spaetzle on my white tablecloth, she clucked softly and scurried off to get a crumb sweeper.
三年前，他在美茵河南岸一栋刷成了浅橙色的弧形大楼里开设了洛宁格尔餐厅。起这个名字并不是出于自大，而是因为这是洛宁格尔全家开的店。在这里，他的父亲会在厨房里和他并肩工作，母亲则会带着关切的眼神巡视就餐区。发现我这一桌的白色桌布上有掉出来的一根鸡蛋面疙瘩时，她轻啧一声，然后匆忙拿来了清理碎屑的刷子。
Mr. Lohninger has an instinct for locating the most pleasurable component of a dish and then intensifying it. Schmaltz piled onto brown bread is good, and so Mr. Lohninger’s schmaltz, sweet with puréed pumpkin and crunchy with flakes of crisp chicken skin, must be very, very good. It is. It arrives once you have chosen from the menu, which is split into parts that mirror Mr. Lohninger’s life. One side is called The World. On it, far-flung ingredients turn up like souvenirs from his time abroad. This is where you will find his interpretation of the black cod that he first ate in New York, served in a smoky broth with radish cannelloni.
洛宁格尔有一种锁定菜肴最令人赏心悦目的部分，然后将其发扬光大的本能。黑面包抹上厚厚的动物油味道不错，因此出自洛宁格尔之手的动物油肯定也会非常非常可口。的确如此。里面既有南瓜泥的香甜，又有小块炸鸡皮带来的松脆。只要客人在菜单上点了这道菜，它立马就会被端上桌。菜单的划分体现出了洛宁格尔的生活经历。单子上有一面名叫世界佳肴(The World)。这里有来自异国他乡的食材，仿佛是他在海外生活期间搜罗的纪念品。你会看到他对黑鳕鱼的诠释。在纽约时，他第一次吃到了这种鱼。在这里，则是放在热腾腾的高汤里，佐以小萝卜面卷。
A SAFE CHOICE OR A DIZZYING GAMBLE
要么选择保守，要么来一次令人眩晕的赌博
In Munich, I ran into another split-personality menu at a restaurant called Geisels Werneckhof. In this case, the division results from the restaurant’s, and perhaps the city’s, cautious approach to change.
在慕尼黑时，在一家叫做“盖泽尔家的韦尔内克霍夫”(Geisels Werneckhof)的餐厅里，我又偶然发现了一份反映出对立个性的菜单。这种分化体现了这家餐厅，乃至这座城市对变革的谨慎态度。
For years the place served traditional food to residents of its snug neighborhood close to the English Garden. Two years ago, it was taken over by the Geisel family, but the landlady made them promise not to touch the leaded-glass windows, the chandeliers that still burn candles or any of the other classic German details in the dining room. She gave them free rein to change the kitchen, though.
很多年里，这家店都在为英格兰花园附近温馨街区的居民供应传统食物。两年前，店面被盖泽尔家族接手，但女房东让他们承诺不得改动就餐区的水晶玻璃窗、依然点蜡烛的枝形吊灯，或是其他的经典德式装饰细节。不过，她允许他们自由改装厨房。
Tohru Nakamura took her up on it. The chef since April, Mr. Nakamura was born in Munich and learned to cook there before going off to study new techniques at restaurants in Japan and the Netherlands. To get the effects he had learned abroad, he had the kitchen outfitted with induction cooktops, a teppanyaki griddle, liquid nitrogen tanks and a Big Green Egg ceramic grill.
中村彻（Tohru Nakamura，音译）抓住了房东赋予的这个机会。去年4月开始担任这家餐厅主厨的中村在慕尼黑出生，并在当地学习烹饪，后来又去了日本和荷兰的餐厅学习新技巧。为了发挥在国外学到的厨艺，他为厨房配备了电磁炉、铁板烧烤盘、液氮罐和一台大绿蛋牌(Big Green Egg)陶瓷烤炉。
Now he was ready for the new international style of cooking. The Werneckhof’s regulars weren’t, though — not all of them. For them, Mr. Nakamura devotes one-half of his menu to fairly uncomplicated, if refined, dishes in which a single, familiar ingredient carries the tune. His lean and precise artichoke barigoule, rounded out with a classically thick artichoke velouté and a fat poached oyster, won’t scare anybody except those who fear harmonious flavors and luxurious textures.
就这样，他为全新的国际化烹饪方式做好了准备，但韦尔内克霍夫餐厅的常客并不都喜欢这些东西。为了他们，中村把一半菜单用来呈现那些，说得委婉点，不那么复杂的菜肴。在这些菜里，只用一种耳熟能详的食材来奠定基调。中村清淡却又恰到好处的洋蓟炖菜，配上标准浓度的洋蓟白汁和一只肥美的水煮牡蛎，会让所有人震惊，除了那些害怕味道协调、口感丰富的人。
The other half of the menu can get pretty far out there, at least by Munich standards. I was deeply impressed by an elaborate composition of tender octopus, ginger-marinated squid, potatoes boiled with onions and bacon, and strips of daikon smoked in the Big Green Egg. Nothing too outrageous about this, but things got complicated in the sauce department: there was a Parmesan cream, a jelly of bone marrow, a miso gel, a garlicky aioli, a drizzle of browned butter, and a rustic vinaigrette with capers and anchovies. When Mr. Nakamura later detailed the dish for me, I felt as dizzy as if I had stepped out onto an airplane wing. At the time, though, I mostly noticed that every last thing on the plate was delicious.
菜单的另一半则列着大相径庭的菜肴，至少以慕尼黑的标准来看是这样。一道由细嫩的章鱼肉、经过姜汁浸泡的鱿鱼、与熏肉和洋葱一起煮的土豆，以及大绿蛋里烤制的萝卜条做成的精致菜肴让我印象深刻。这些都还不太令人吃惊，但到了调味汁部分，就变得复杂起来：有帕尔马乳酪、骨髓冻、胶状味增、蒜泥蛋黄酱、些许焦化黄油，以及带有刺山柑和凤尾鱼的油醋汁。当中村后来向我详细介绍这道菜时，我感到一阵眩晕，像是抬脚踩上了机翼一样。不过当时，我只是觉得，盘子里的每样东西都是美味。
KEEPING THE JOY ON THE MENU
让菜单散发出愉悦
The half-old, half-new menu at Geisels Werneckhof reminded me of something Justin Leone, an American sommelier working at a very good Munich restaurant called Tantris, had written to me in an e-mail. Compared with fad-chasing Americans, he wrote, Bavarians have “a tremendous appreciation for consistency and longevity.” To see a city that was crazy for a taste of the new, he advised me to hit Berlin.
盖泽尔家的韦尔内克霍夫餐厅一半传统、一半创新的菜单让我想起了美国侍酒师贾斯廷·莱昂内(Justin Leone)在给我的一封电子邮件中写到的内容。他在一家非常棒的慕尼黑餐厅工作，名叫Tantris。邮件中写道，相比于追逐时髦的美国人，巴伐利亚人“极为崇尚协调统一和源远流长”。如果想看看为尝新而疯狂的城市，他建议我去柏林。
Perhaps the most dynamic chef in Berlin is Tim Raue, who as a teenager ran with a street gang in the Kreuzberg neighborhood and then found his home in restaurant kitchens. By 2010, he had opened a place of his own around the corner from Checkpoint Charlie, Restaurant Tim Raue, but he wanted it to be different from the formal, classical, French-influenced dining rooms that he believed were draining the joy out of German fine dining.
蒂姆·劳厄(Tim Raue)或许是柏林最有活力的厨师。十几岁时，他和街头帮派混迹于克罗伊茨贝格一带。后来，他在餐厅后厨找到了自己的天地。2010年，他在查理检查哨附近的街角开了属于自己的蒂姆·劳厄餐厅(Restaurant Tim Raue)。但他希望这家店和那些受法国影响的古典正式餐厅有所不同，因为他觉得那些地方抽走了德式美食的乐趣。
“I wanted to have a restaurant in Germany where people could be happy,” he said. His menu was built around bright, exciting flavors from China, Vietnam and Thailand. To let customers know that fun was not forbidden, he dressed his dining room staff in Chuck Taylor high-tops. The sneakers put a spring in their steps, although when my server pulled on a single white glove to set down clean silverware, I couldn’t stop humming “Thriller.”
“我希望在德国开一家让人们觉得开心的餐厅，”他说。他的菜单以中国、越南和泰国的菜式为基础，颜色鲜亮、令人兴奋。为了让客人们知道店里推崇玩乐，他让就餐区员工穿Chuck Taylor高帮帆布鞋。这种运动鞋会让他们走路时好似脚踩弹簧，当我的侍应生拿出一只白手套，开始摆放干净的银质餐具时，我忍不住哼起了《颤栗》(Thriller)。
And I was almost ready to moonwalk when I tasted the restaurant’s Chinese-style suckling pig. A fold of pork belly had been red-cooked and then deep-fried, giving it a gentle sweetness under a terrifically crunchy layer of skin. I couldn’t make up my mind whether I liked it better dipped in the little pile of salt and Sichuan peppercorns, or dredged in a reduction made from pigs’ feet and dried tangerine peel.
吃到这里的中式乳猪时，我都快要跳太空步了。因为相继经过红烧和充分油炸，五花肉那一层肉皮酥脆可口，底下的肉则稍稍有些甜味。我拿不定主意，自己到底是更喜欢蘸着那一小碟椒盐吃呢，还是撒上猪蹄和陈皮做成的佐料？
WHAT THEY'LL DO FOR GOOD PASTRAMI
为了上乘的五香熏牛肉，他们一往无前
Like Brooklyn or Portland, Ore., Berlin is now full of cooks trying to make a living out of barbecue, bao and other populist staples. For sheer determination and stubbornness, I doubt many of them can match Paul Mogg and Oskar Melzer, who opened a New York-style deli because they couldn’t find an easier way to get a good pastrami sandwich.
就像布鲁克林或俄勒冈州的波特兰一样，柏林现在到处都是想借烤肉和包子一类的平民主食谋生的厨师。就坚定的决心和执着而言，我怀疑他们中的许多人都比不上保罗·莫格(Paul Mogg)和奥斯卡·梅尔策(Oskar Melzer)。他们两人开了一家纽约风格的熟食店，原因是，他们找不到吃到上乘五香熏牛肉三明治的更简便的办法。
They sampled pastrami imports, hoping for greatness. “These packages were showing up with the Statue of Liberty on the package, and the pastrami was so dry and sweet it was like a candy cane,” said Mogg & Melzer’s chef, Joey Passarella. A native of Nyack, N.Y., Mr. Passarella met his partners while cooking in Berlin restaurants. After some arm-twisting, he agreed to take on the task of brining briskets in the restaurant’s basement and smoking them in the backyard.
他们对进口的五香熏牛肉进行了品尝，希望找到超凡脱俗的口味。“它们的包装上有自由女神像，里面的熏肉却非常干，非常甜，像甘蔗似的，”莫格与梅尔策餐厅(Mogg & Melzer)的大厨乔伊·帕萨雷拉(Joey Passarella)说。他是土生土长的纽约州奈阿克人，在柏林当厨师时，遇到了现在的合作伙伴。经过一番讨价还价，他同意承担起在餐厅地下室腌制牛胸肉并在后院进行熏制的工作。
His pastrami is quietly smoky, noticeably peppery, not too salty, flagrantly pink. Sliced and layered on excellent, fresh, un-spongy rye modeled on the bread from Schwartz’s deli in Montreal and spread with a close approximation of brown deli mustard from Düsseldorf, it adds up to a pastrami on rye that only a handful of delis in New York can match.
他制成的五香熏牛肉稍稍有些烟熏味，胡椒味很明显，咸味不太重，呈正宗的粉色。熏好的牛肉被切成片，一层一层地放在如同蒙特利尔施瓦茨熟食店(Schwartz’s)的上好新鲜紧实黑麦面包上，并被抹上了类似于杜塞尔多夫棕色熟食芥末的酱料。于是，便有了这道只有纽约少数几家熟食店可以与之媲美的熏牛肉黑麦面包三明治。
Mogg & Melzer stretches a short distance outside the deli genre. There is a brûléed chicken liver mousse, for instance, and a compact but thoughtful wine list. If you come in the morning, you can ask your server for lox dusted with fresh horseradish and chives on a chewy, unsweetened hand-rolled bagel, which you can’t do at Katz’s in Manhattan, and watch the cooks working behind glass shelves lined with house-made beet pickles bob their heads to rap while steam rises from superbly light and jiggly cheesecakes resting on the window ledge.
莫格与梅尔策餐厅稍稍扩展了熟食店的范畴。比如，店里有一种焗鸡肝慕斯，还有一张简短却细心周到的酒单。如果上午来，你可以向服务员点撒有新鲜西洋山葵和香葱的熏鲑鱼，配上耐嚼的原味手卷百吉饼。在曼哈顿的卡茨店(Katz’s)，这可是办不到的。你还能看到，在放着一排自制腌甜菜的玻璃隔板后工作的厨师闲聊时频频点头，窗台上超级松软而诱人的奶酪蛋糕正冒着气。
That Jewish food is now cooked and eaten there certainly resonates in many directions. And I would like the building’s story to have a happy ending. But I can’t honestly write that the pastrami and bagels and cheesecake have any meaning that is deeper than their own quality. They are simply very good.
在那里，人们会烹制和享用犹太食物，这一点肯定会带来诸多反响。我希望这家店的故事有一个完美的结局。但我实在没法说，五香熏牛肉、百吉饼和奶酪蛋糕有什么超出它们品质的意义。它们就是真的非常好吃。
