Fish Tacos in Seaside, California by Ruth Paget

Fish Tacos in Seaside, California by Ruth Paget 

Tourists seeking local flavor at Googie’s Restaurant in Seaside, California (close to Monterey) might want to try the fish tacos. The Pacific cod used in the fish tacos can be broiled or deep-fried. I like crunchy extra calories, so I always get deep-fried fish tacos. 

The fish tacos come three to a plate with soft, corn tortillas, shredded cabbage, pico de gallo salsa, and fresh lime slices for squeezing. The pico de gallo salsa, pronounced “ga-yo,” is made with chopped tomato, onion, Serrano peppers, salt, lime juice, and cilantro. Its perky flavor ties the deep-fried Pacific cod and cabbage together with the savory flavor of the warm corn tortillas. 

Googie’s also serves traditional English fish and chips complete with vinegar in a bottle on the side. 

The restaurant’s location by the ocean and the Embassy Suites Hotel and Holiday Inn Express make it a great location for breakfast before touring downtown Monterey or shopping in Seaside. (Googie’s is in the Seaside Auto Mall for starters.) 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Crashing the Engineers' Breakfast Club in Seaside (CA) by Ruth Paget

Crashing the Engineers’ Breakfast Club in Seaside (CA) by Ruth Paget 

Every time I go to the Breakfast Club in Seaside (California), I see someone in an engineering school sweatshirt. Even when it is hot outside, these people do not wear T-Shirts. 

I ignore them and enjoy looking over the breakfast items on the menu. I like the eggs Benedict options and the omelet choices on the menu. 

My favorite is a real locals choice: the Chile Verde, Pork, and Jack Omelet topped with Avocado and Sour Cream. It costs $20.75 and is built for an engineer. I cut mine in half and take one half home to warm up for dinner. 

Two meals for $10.375 is a good deal for pork stewed with spicy green peppers (lots of Vitamin C here) and melted Monterey Jack cheese. This salty dish is especially good in summer heat. 

The movers and shakers of Seaside and Monterey County eat at the Breakfast Club with the engineers. 

I have an idea for raising $1,000 a day for this great restaurant that I would like to share with the owners and happy customers: 

To raise the $1,000 sell 50 chile verde omelets each day to 10 corporate clients who buy 5 omelets or sell chile verde omelets to 5 corporate clients who buy 10 omelets.

(50 omelets x $20 = $1,000) 

This is not an original idea. This is Cuban micro-capitalism. Little bakeries in Cuba are supposed to raise this kind of money this way on a daily basis thanks to locals and tourists.

Cuba’s problem is that they have very little money to spend and they no longer receive cash subsidies from Russia. Micro-capitalism has not been a huge success there. 

The U.S. has more money and a tradition of buying lunch out. Micro-capitalism might work here. 

$20 is expensive, but the same method works with $10 items as well to give you a daily cash flow of $500.  

Good daily cash flow pays rent and employees. 

Micro-capitalism might work in Monterey County and is a topic worthy of discussion at the Breakfast Club agora I think.  Other restaurants might be interested in this method as well.

 By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Acme Coffee Roasting Company by Ruth Paget

Acme Coffee Roasting Company by Ruth Paget 

I buy my locally roasted Acme Coffee at Star Market in Salinas (California) after doing recycling of plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and glass bottles with the parking lot recycling center. 

My husband Laurent and I use our recycling earnings to buy some specialty grocery items such as the following:

-Road Dog Acme Coffee by Acme Coffee Roasting Company – a local roaster located in Seaside, California owned and operated by veteran Chuck Thurman

-French cheese like pont l’évêque 

-Californian cheese like Point Reyes Farmstead Blue 

-Italian 00 semolina flour -Ancient grain flours like quinoa, amaranth, and einkorn 

-German chocolate like Ritter-Sport from Stuttgart, Germany 

-Progresso French onion soup 

-Large, juicy white grapes that taste good with espresso strong Road Dog Coffee from Acme Roasting Company 

Acme Coffee headquarters, located across town from Salinas in Seaside, sells coffee, coffee beans, and cool merchandise to nearby auto mall employees (sellers of and mechanics for Chevrolets, Jaguars, Land Rovers, Porsches, Teslas, and BMWs) and denizens of Obama Way with its renovated Louisiana look. 

The Acme Coffee website lists several kinds of beans for sale that can be ground while you sip a coffee: 

-the espresso strong Road Dog beans I love 

-Valve Job 

-Ninety Weight 

-Motor City Espresso 

-Power Glide 

-Acme Decaf 

-Roaster’s Choice 

-Uganda Sipi Falls 

Acme Coffee Merchandise includes:  

-Acme logo T-shirts 

-Cold Brew Tees 

-Acme logo zipper hoodies 

-Acme coffee tees 

Neighborhood locals mingle with tourists and California State University Monterey Bay students for news and coffee in Acmes convenient location off Highway 1 near Embassy Suites Hotel and Googie’s Restaurant. 

I like to think of Acme Roasting Company as Seaside’s Café du Monde and feel part of the community even if I am drinking Acme’s Road Dog Coffee at home. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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French Cakes at Paris Bakery by Ruth Paget

Paris Bakery Cakes by Ruth Paget 

My family has been going to Paris Bakery in Seaside, California for more than thirty years to buy baguette bread with a five-year hiatus when my husband Laurent and I lived in Stuttgart, Germany. 

What a lot of people do not know is that Paris Bakery can make French, Austrian, and German cakes and pastries with advance notice for parties. They often have snack size versions of pastries available for purchase for tasting as well. 

Some of Paris Bakery’s beautiful and delicious confections include: 

-Diplomat Cake- 

This round cake that is served in wedges is perfect for watching the Diplomat TV series with tea or coffee. It is made with croissant pieces and golden raisins in a Grand Marnier egg custard and topped off with a maraschino cherry and a whipped cream rosette. 

-Fraisiers (Strawberry Cake) or Framboisiers (Raspberry Cake)- 

This yellow layer cake is filled with mousseline cream and strawberries. It is iced with whipped cream and garnished with toasted and sliced almonds. 

-Opera Cake- 

This cake is perfect for theatre nights. It is made with two layers of yellow cake and one chocolate layer flavored with coffee syrup. The alternating layers are filled with mocha buttercream and chocolate ganache. Ganache is creamy, fudgy frosting. 

-Napoleons- 

Mille Feuille dough filled with pastry cream. Mille Feuille means 1,000 layers. 

-St Michel- 

This dessert is made up of one layer of chocolate mousse topped with a layer of Grand Marnier mousse. 

-Linzer Torte- 

This Austrian pastry is filled with jam and has a lattice piecrust topping. 

Two holiday cakes you might want to try are the bûche de Noël (Yule log) and the galette des rois (kings’ cake). The galette des rois is eaten two weeks after Christmas and comes with a crown for the person who finds the fève (porcelain figurine) in their piece of cake. 

These cakes will get you started on a French cake tasting adventure. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Ferdi's New Orleans Fare in Seaside, California by Ruth Paget

Ferdi’s New Orleans Fare in Seaside, California by Ruth Paget 

I used to eat lunch at Ferdi’s, a New Orleans café, in Seaside (California) when I was in graduate school at San José State University in library and information science.  

I would go to Ferdi’s with my up-and-coming filmmaker friend C. We ate Po’Boy Sandwiches with spicy fried fish or oysters on the left side of the restaurant. The right side of the restaurant was a “sit-down” restaurant for dishes like Shrimp Creole. 

We were on the Cajun or country side of the restaurant. We drank icy cold Coca-Colas with our Po’Boy Sandwiches. Baton Rouge, Louisiana is the gastronomic capital of Cajun cooking, which features many deep-fried dishes. 

The gastronomic capital of Creole cuisine is obviously New Orleans, Louisiana. Like the city’s architecture and gardens, the food of New Orleans has both French and Spanish roots. 

New Orleans has several dishes that can be made in large quantities that caterers might be interested in trying. Some of these dishes might even be suitable for freezer storage, which might make New Orleans cringe, but Paul Bocuse in France made a fortune on his frozen food. I found several dishes among the 288 recipes in The New Orleans Cookbook: Creole, Cajun, and Louisiana French Recipes – Past and Present by Rima Collin and Richard Collin that could be adopted for frozen or refrigerator storage such as: 

-baked and breaded oysters – warmed up these would taste good dipped in sriracha mayonnaise for a modern twist 

-Creole shrimp and crab gumbo that is thickened with gummy okra slices. This stew uses a classic Creole flavoring combination of onion, green pepper, and shallots to flavor it that many other Creole dishes also use such as Shrimp Creole. 

-Cajun oyster and sausage gumbo thickened with filé. Filé is a powder made of dried sassafras leaves 

-navy white bean soup seasoned with onions, shallots, and green peppers and pieces of French garlic sausage 

-red bean soup seasoned like the white bean soup 

-spicy red beans and rice 

-white beans, rice, and smoked sausage 

-jambalaya – a rice dish whose Spanish ancestor is paella. Rice is the major cash crop of Louisiana 

-crabmeat au gratin – a baked dish of crab, heavy cream, and cheddar cheese 

-crawfish étoufée –a one dish meal made with crawfish tails, onions, green pepper, celery, and shallots over rice. Crawfish is pronounced “crayfish.” 

-spicy shrimp Creole is called shrimp sauce piquante in the cookbook and is served over rice 

-trout amandine is served with a sauce made of butter, sliced almonds, and lemon juice 

-New Orleans Trout Sauce Normande – made with butter, poaching liquid, and Calvados (apple brandy) 

You can try dishes like these at Ferdi’s in Seaside, California or make them at home using the very useful 288 recipes in The New Orleans Cookbook by Rima Collin and Richard Collin. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Manga and Anime Rallyes in Seaside, California by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Manga and Anime Rallyes in Seaside, California by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My daughter Florence is part of the generation that saw Pixar animated films explode into the marketplace that used Computer-Assisted Design to create their mobile images.

When the “kids” became teens, they wanted to be animators, voice talent, and animation-studio moguls for CAD films (Computer-Assisted Design).

Japanese manga comics and anime comics were linked to CAD, especially anime, which creates 3-D images on a 2-D surface using the techniques of vanishing-point perspective, alteration of frame lengths, and color and shading.

The library system where I worked had a huge graphic novel collection (graphic novel = new word for comics).  When I was in library school, Art Spiegelman”s graphic novel Mauss was a hit and later Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis about Iran was made into a film.

I loved using the comics medium to introduce historical topics as well as being a leisure medium.  I also supported using the newer graphic novels to teach conversational English skills and vocabulary to English-language learners (ELLs).  There are usually 250 vocabulary words in a graphic novel, which is a nice amount of words to memorize before going onto a next graphic novel in a series.

When my daughter was in high school and received a car for her 16^th birthday (Detroit mom and French MBA dad gift), she was free to go out with her friends and do “Manga and Anime Rallyes.”

I was not allowed to go to the rallyes, but all the restaurants they went to in Seaside knew “Mom” would cover a restaurant bill, if Florence’s “beginner” credit card with a limited amount of money to spend on it did not work.

I did ply Florence with questions playfully to find out that she and about 5 friends went to Harumi Japanese (formerly Fuji) in Seaside and ordered a family-style meal that they all split the tab for and did Manga and Anime Rallyes. 

I thought what they ate sounded great and they left a good tip, because 6 is a rather large number of people to serve.    

-Dragon rolls made with eel sushi and and topped with avocado

-California rolls (cooked fish sushi rolls with mayonnaise)

-Bento lunches to share with shrimp tempura and beef teriyaki

-the bento lunches still come with miso soup made with tofu and seaweed, salads, and rice.

-the kids did not eat sashimi (raw fish), because it is expensive

-the kids drank sodas and Japanese fad sodas as a “cocktail”

The kids all had individual plates and would share out what they wanted depending on food preferences, allergies, and/or religious beliefs.

If Harumi was very busy, the teens would go to another restaurant in Seaside.  There were several very close to Harumi.  Florence had a mobile phone and would tell me, if she was going to a place besides Harumi for lunch and anime rallye.  Almost all of these restaurants are still there (20+ years just counting from the time I have been in California.)

-Nifty Fifties Café

-Baan Thai

-Orient (Vietnamese and Chinese)

-Round Table Pizza

-Stammtisch (German – Bavarian)

-City Diner (Filipino and American)

-Tortuga (Mexican)

-Orient Express (Korean)

-Lucky Bamboo (Chinese)

-Borders Bookstore Café

-Paris Bakery

-Chef Lee’s (Chinese)

-Former Lee's Garden in Marina (Chinese)

-Taquitos (in Salinas)

The reason I could not go on these outings was probably, because the kids met their boyfriends at these Manga and Anime Rallyes.

They played the Japanese game Go and Sushi Go!, read manga and anime, and drew before and after eating depending on the crowd in the restaurant.

However, I was the Youth Services Librarian for Monterey County (California) at the time, so I asked Florence to help me start a “Game” using library books with the ultimate goal of creating Animated Movie Moguls.

I did a handout for staff at all 17-branches of our library system, gave it to homework center coordinators, and did electronic database workshops around the county showing how to use the library’s online resources that you could get from home. 

I made handouts for these workshops.  All the students in Monterey County knew about these services and all library staff learned how to teach how to do these “holds,” which were “reserve-and-pick up” orders on books in the library system.

(I also let the Children’s Council of Monterey County know about these workshops and gave them information.)

The Animated Movie Mogul Game runs like this:

You had to make a list of all animated books in the Monterey County System and read them twice and do all the exercises in them twice to build a portfolio to show a college counselor to get into CAD classes using the leveling up procedure of video games:

-Practice D’Nealian handwriting to strengthen hands for drawing. 

(Also, some people will pay to have invitations, dinner placecards, and menus handwritten in this style.)

-Practice calligraphy styles

(Read about history and usage practices)

-Draw landscapes

-Draw buildings using perspective

-Draw landscapes in perspective

-Draw cars of various makes in perspective

-Draw various animals, including horses, in various poses

(Start with postcard photos of animals)

-Draw garden flowers and bushes using a gardening book and from real life

-Draw wildflowers using a field guide and from real life

-Draw stick figures of the human body in motion

-Draw portraits

-Draw fashion from a history of fashion reference book

(Start with Egypt)

-Read Dummies books about how to do Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access

Work on setting up a database of your contacts in Access, especially people who can help you get into college and apply for merit scholarships

-Read CAD (Computer-Assisted Design Books)

-Set up shots like Hitchcock did to shoot film scenes

-Meet with a college counselor to discuss your career goals

This Manga and Anime Rallye I have described above can be done at home or in a youth center, too.

Expansion 1:  History of Graphic Novels

Mini Expansion now that the "kids" have graduated from college.  I read all the library books I could on the history and techniques used in comics, graphic novels, manga (Japanese graphic novels), manwha (Korean graphic novels), and anime (Japanese 3-D comics that use the techniques of film).  There are probably many more comic history books in the library, but these  4 books look like updates on some more classical works:

Understanding Comics:  The Invisible Art  by Scott McCloud

This book along with Schodt's work that follows are the classics in the field.  I have read both of these.

Manga! Manga!:  The World of Japanese Comics By Frederick L. Schodt

The Comics:  An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art by Jerry Robinson

Comic Book Nation:  The Transformation of Youth Culture in America by Bradforth W. Wright


Expansion 2:  French Comics

I like Asterix and the Goths.  Manga readers should learn about Comics Around the World.  There is an Asterix Amusement Park for families outside Paris, France.

This comic series, Asterix and the Goths, is about the ancient French called the Gauls, who had to defend themselves against marauding ancient Romans.

My husband Laurent and I were able to buy a series of Asterix in English over the years at Atlantis Fantasy World in Santa Cruz, California, which specializes in graphic novels.  We usually combined a visit here with a day outing to Beach Boardwalk Amusement Park.

Expansion 3:  Monica from Brazil

I have an entire blog devoted to Monica comics from Brazil on this Savvy Mom Ruth Paget website.

Read her series to be international.

Expansion 3: Mafalda from Argentina

This comic was available in Spanish in book format at the library system where I worked.  Mafalda is a comic from Argentina.  I mentioned this comic to Spanish speakers at work and said American students learning Spanish might like it, too.


(Disclaimer:  I grew up reading Archie comics about suburban, American high schools and Ivanhoe historical comics, because I am related to Sir Walter Scott according to a great-aunt through my Hodgson relatives. The Hodgsons have more children than the Penningtons even.  They all made use of public libraries to keep their children reading and entertained.)

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Sampling Thai Cuisine with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sampling Thai Cuisine with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget while Reviewing for the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) - Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I loved the Thai food that I sampled at Baan Thai Restaurant in Seaside (California) that reminded me of my life at the University of Chicago when I was in college there.

I queried my editor at the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 100,000) about doing an article on Baan Thai.  She asked me to hold off and do an article on a Thai restaurant in Marina called My Thai that had just opened up.

I eventually took Florence out to this restaurant and Baan Thai several times to sample Thai food as a cultural outing.  You can learn about world history through studying the trade practices and history of spices and food ingredients.  As we ate I would tell her about the information I looked up.

I wrote the following article on My Thai restaurant:

“Thai food is totally individual, befitting a country which has never been conquered, yet it has similarities to both Indian and Chinese food,” notes Charmaine Soloman in The Thai Cookbook: A Complete Guide to the World’s Most Exciting Cuisine.

I decided to see how My Thai in Marina (CA) honors its Indian heritage.  On a recent lunch visit, I ordered Panang curry with shrimp.

There is a major difference between Indian and Thai curries.  For example, the chile paste used to prepare Panang curry is made with many fresh ingredients like cilantro roots, lemon grass, galangal, and kaffir lime zest whereas Indian curries rely on more dry spices for flavors.

I have perused many cookbooks at home to make Panang curry, my favorite Thai dish.  The waiter told me that they thickened the curry by letting it simmer a long time and not adding anything to it like crushed peanuts at My Thai.

My Thai takes no shortcuts in the kitchen, but does not keep customers waiting long for their food.  The curry I ordered arrived piping hot within minutes, tickled my nose with a sweet aroma of shrimp paste and coconut cream.

The orange-pink color of the curry matched that of the plump shrimp.  The orange-pink color contrasted nicely with the green beans and green peppers, sweet red peppers, and carrots.

The sweet-and-savory curry no doubt got its salty flavor from Thailand’s namm pla fish sauce.  I ate each curry-coated vegetable, leaf of Asian basil, and shrimp with bites of flavorful rice.

The carrots and green beans were crisper than what I had expected, but that did not keep me from eating them; I did not want to waste any curry.

The Panang curry came as part of a lunch with a cup of hot-and-sour soup, which had tofu, mushrooms, and slices of galangal in it.

The Thais use galangal like the Chinese use ginger, which it resembles in appearance.

Galangal’s flavor makes me think of biting into perfume that lingers on the tongue.  The woody slices in the soup may not be to everyone’s liking, but I ate mine.

I drank a Thai iced tea made with black tea, sugar, and a healthy does of cream.  This drink is a particularly good antidote for putting out chile fires, if you order spicy food.

The default spiciness of the food at My Thai is mild, so be sure to ask for spicy food, if you like that.

The food was so good that I came back for a weekend lunch with my husband Laurent.  We started our meal with orders of chicken satay and fried shrimp rolls.

The satay was made of flattened, marinated chicken breasts.  Their bright yellow color hinted at turmeric in the marinade and their sweet flavor signaled the use of coconut cream as well.

The grilled chicken came with a peanut dipping sauce, cucumber relish, and strands of carrot and cabbage.  The peanut sauce was rich.  I liked refreshing my palate with the sweet relish.  The tender chicken meat made me want to make a meal out of my appetizer.

The fried shrimp rolls that Laurent ordered looked like skinny baseball bats with shrimp.  They came with a sweet sauce that accentuated the flavor of the shrimp.  We both liked this dish.  We felt we had made a gastronomic discovery.

I drank a Thai Singha beer with the appetizers I ordered.   This crisp lager reminds me of Corona and goes well with spicy food.  Laurent ordered the most well-known Thai dish as his main course, Pad Thai, while I chose Dusit’s Delicious Duck.

The stir-fried noodles and tofu in Pad Thai hearken back to Thai food’s Chinese heritage, yet the salty, sweet, and sour flavor of the dish make it uniquely Thai.

Laurent ordered his version of beef Pad Thai.  It came with a generous helping of crushed peanuts on top as a garnish.  Laurent liked the Pad Thai, but could only eat half of it due to its size.

My Thai calls its version of roast duck Dusit.  Many slices of duck with the skin intact flavored by a medley of vegetables made up of baby bok choy, carrots, sweet red pepper, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and onion made up the dish.

The baby bok choy tasted especially good with the duck, offsetting the duck’s richness.

There were ample servings of meat.  We were able to take home boxes of midnight snacks.

The Bangkok-born owner said that he serves Thai food as it is prepared in Thailand.  In the few months that My Thai has been open, the owner has cultivated a regular clientele, who love the authentic Thai cooking.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Munich Oktoberfest at Stammtisch in Seaside by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Munich Oktoberfest at Stammtisch in Seaside by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I went to a beer tasting at my neighborhood Bavarian Restaurant in Seaside, California called Stammtisch in October 2000 to try my first beers from Munich, Germany.

My husband Laurent let me go alone to the private room, reserved-ticket affair to eat a Bavarian meal and do the tastings.   I am sure he was in another nearby restaurant with his buddies from work eating a similar meal and doing a beer tasting, too.

Seating place tags took the worry out of where I was going to sit.  I was seated at the end of a long table.

Soon an older man sat by me and told me he was studying culinary history now that he was retired.

Ruth Reichl had just published her food memoir, which I loved.  I wanted to record what I had learned about foreign cuisines for neighborhood history and for my family.  I liked eating out when I went on trips overseas and thought going to ethnic restaurants would be a good way to teach my daughter Florence, a graduate of Juilliard, about other cultures.

My dinner mate said his newest discovery was that boneless cuts of meat started to be sold in the U.S. during World War II.

Meat was deboned to make for lighter shipping according to my dinner mate and the trend caught on.  I love trivia like this and looked forward to picking this man’s brain all evening.

A couple joined us who did home beer brewing.  All three of them corrected me in German, which I had never studied.

The man on my right brought in his ten-month-old son to show him off to his buddies.  He told his son, “We’re all going camping soon!” as his wife scooped the baby up and went out of the dining room.

All of us discovered that we had all lived in Wisconsin at some point in our lives.  We made a Green Packers cheer and pounded our fists together in the crowded room.

Savory aromas wafted in from the kitchen making me very hungry, but the food took awhile to appear.  We had bread on the table, but I thought the goose fat set out to spread on the bread might be too rich and I did not want to be the goose girl.

I tried a hefe-weizen beer to start before the tasting actually started.  This is a wheat beer.  My dinner mates told me that “hefe” means “yeast” and that “weizen” means “wheat.”  The beer reminded me of piecrust with a little sugar added to it.

Ham hocks came out of the kitchen with a knife and fork sticking out of them.  Ham hocks are large.  I asked for a slice of pork roast with onion gravy, flour dumplings, and warm, shredded cabbage as my meal.

I thought of a sweet cookbook I read when I lived in Virginia as I ate called The Flour is Different: German Heritage Recipes and Traditions by Trudy Gilganast.

The author of this German cookbook related that she had to recreate the baking recipes of her homeland due to different wheat milling practices in our two countries.

The author of the book wrote that Germans like sweet and savory combinations.  I could tell from the book that Germans are awesome bakers.

I remembered as I ate a dumpling on my plate at Stammtisch that she said southern Germans make their dumplings from flour and those in the northern German are made from potatoes.

A German beer importer was our tasting master for the evening.  The first beer we tasted was Spaten Premium.  The importer told us that Spaten was the first beer to be tapped at the first Oktoberfest in 1397.

He continued by saying that Spaten still holds this honor at Oktoberfest.  Once it has been tapped, it receives a 21-gun salute.

“Then, we all drink like fish!” he said.

I duly noted that Spaten Premium is the number-one selling beer in Germany.  It is considered a light beer with an alcohol percentage above 4%, so it is considered a malt liquor in the U.S.

The importer went on to say that Spaten Premium is a lager beer.

It is not aged and is ready for consumption for four to five weeks.

“What does “lager” mean?” I asked.

“To lay down,” one of my dinner mates said.  I took this information in with a sip of the premium beer without really understanding what that meant at the time.

A quick glance in Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion informed me that brewers make lagers with cool temperature-fermenting yeasts, which allows the beer to mature at freezing point.  That is a pretty technical explanation for a clean-tasting wallop of beer.

Our next beer was a Spaten Pilsen.  The importer said Pilsen is a town in the Czech Republic.  When golden, clear Pilsens were developed in 1842, other beers were cloudy.

The importer took this time to point out that hops used in the beer-making give beer its flavor.

The importer said the Czechs had hit upon the ability to control malting temperatures, which gave the beer its golden color.

The Germans knew a good idea when they saw one and copied the style.  This beer is supposed to be lighter in alcohol content than other beers, but its bitter bite made me grimace.

My dinner mate said hops gave the beer its bitter taste.  I drank the Dinkel-Aker Pilsen made in Stuttgart, Germany and liked it.  I drank it when I lived there five years as well.

At home, when I was reading Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion, I discovered that malt is grains of barley, wheat, oats, or rye.  We tried Spaten Oktoberfest, which was in a blue bottle and tasted sweet.

Erdinger was our next beer, which you have to pour in a tilted glass so the foam head does not spill over the glass.

Then, we tried a Kostrikisser.  I often drank this beer in Germany when we would go bowling with Philly Sandwiches on base in Stuttgart, Germany.

Everyone laughed that I only drank about 1/2 of the glasses that were served to me.

“That’s because I am about ½ your body size,” I said.

“My husband is coming to pick me up, and I don’t want to crawl out of here,” I remarked.

The importer laughed and gave me some Oktoberfest glasses for my husband and me.

I smiled when I found out I would be going to live in Stuttgart, Germany, which is close to the Land of the Wittelsbach in Bavaria, Germany for five years.  That was another exchange student type adventure for me.

I have always thought Stammtisch, which means owner’s friends table in German, could make a lot of money by holding Oktoberfest dinners.  

This celebration in Germany is held over several weeks.  Families celebrate Oktoberfest by buying Oktoberfest beer at the store for the festival and making a festive meal at home.  (If you set up a reservation app for the restaurant, you might be able to sell out Oktoberfest dinners in advance.)

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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