NGL school food was the worst, even worse than Army food really. Literally nothing had any taste at all. I ask myself today how the fuck can you make Pasta with Tomato Sauce and Jagdwurst that tastes like a glass of water? Unbelievable...
We had that crap until the 6th grade, but just because it was a village and a pretty east-conservative village. The city 15 km away did not even acknowledge the eastern crap food
I live in post-Soviet republic. Not far from my home there is cafeteria near industrial area, that used to be much bigger during Soviet era, that works since early 80's. According to my father, who went there for lunch as he worked back then in nearby car manufacturer, it still serves same simple and tasty dishes and has same classic Soviet interior. Place is still very popular during lunch time, many local workers from different companies now go there.
I still cannot believe that I was alive at a time when Germany’s capital was divided by a wall separating it into two distinct countries. It feels like it belongs only in history books but I remember having products at home that had tags “Made in West Germany”
I have seen multiple things here in Australia with "made in West Germany". I got a bunch of spanners from someone who had a lada. The lada died and their next vehicle ended up running but completely rusted out and left at my uncles farm when he moved. My uncle died and I now live on that farm. Decided to get rid of all the old cars and cleared the pickup out of rubbish and found them in there, "made in USSR" on them but the S is backwards on a few of the spanners and the right way on the rest.
In the USSR, that Jägerschnitzel would probably have been made with Doktorskaya sausage. Andong has done a great video on the history of that Soviet "mystery meat".
good Doktorskaya is not bad at all, we have the more expensive versions in Latvia which have the original recipe as it should be. but of course if you have a good meat, you'll have a good sausage... but perhaps do not make it in schnitzel kind of way :D
@@monmouthnjyep. Soviet Russia had a far bigger issue with getting edible meat on the table (while bread and later alcohol was dirt cheap and plentiful) than East Germany.
German here - from the West but often in the East but never saw anyone of these except the Schwedenbecher… And I mean there are Jägerschnitzel of course but last time I ate it in Thüringen it was with mushrooms just like in the West
I don't know. I remember visits at our East Berlin friends in the late 1980's. To me as a child, it was like a cornucopia. So many kinds of salami and ham that we didn't have. An incredible selection of cakes in the pastry shops. Everything seemed more colourful to me - perhaps because I was small, perhaps because it had the exciting aura of a "foreign country", but still. In Czechoslovakia of the 1980's, I didn't see such rich selection of goods. On the other hand, we didn't have those drastic shortages like Poland or - according to the footage in this video - East Germany. In Czechoslovakia, basic stuff was always there. It just lacked the colour, so to say.
To me, the sad thing is more what you see today in the East. In every town, you can find an ice cream parlor (usually called Venezia or something similarly generic), some kebab/döner shops, some pizza, maybe some Flammkuchen. Good restaurants are scarce. Most bakeries (Germany has the widest selection of bread in the world!) belong to some chains. They also serve as a substitution for cafés because there aren't almost any real cafés any more. A walk through an East German town is quite sad if you're a foodie or you want to sit down somewhere charming. Sorry to say.
That's because you were in Berlin, it got special treatment when it came to food and other stuff. They had West Berlin right across the border and wanted to show off what socialists could do.
@@cioccolateriaveneziana I grew up in West Germany in the 80's. Back then things were different here too, not as generic - as you say - as they are today. It's the McDonaldization of the everything, if that's the right word.
I visited East Berlin twice in 1988 in the same week ( one trip official and the other unofficial ) when I was in the British Army During the 2nd we found a pub in the back streets of the Alexanderplatz and had Broiler chicken all washed down with the local beer which was so weak it was like water ! And the staff made a fuss of us because we paid in West German Deutsche Mark ( black market currency in the East) they threw in a few extra rounds of the beer !
I remember going on a BRIXMIS day trip early 70's in Berlin. Had lunch in a back street knipe of meatballs mash and gravy. It was good. Felt a bit wired sitting there in No2's amongst 'the enemy' 🤣. Great times. My forever favourite city.
I went in the same year I think. I remember having to change a ridiculous amount of DM for DDR marks and struggling to find things to spend it on. Unter den Linden was grim with functional shops labeled 'Shoes', 'Books', etc. No brands. Winter gloom and mist didn't help. The ground floor of the bookshop was stuffed to the rafters with piles of books on socialist economics. Pass. We ended up in a 'Cuban' restaurant. I remember my main being a pork chop with black beans and pineapple ring from tins, with boiled potato and cabbage on the side.
yeah because you got served the cheap bear .... more expensive beer and beer that was ment for export to the west were by far better but still the regular ones had some vol% so it wasn't like water after all .... I tasted british beer too and still prefer german and sometimes even east german variants
In Krakow, Poland, I love to go and eat at one of the Soviet era "Milk Bar" type cafés. The food is very similar to food of the DDR. Basic, but wholesome and filling, cheap too!
1:33 "Das ist echte Tomatensoße, mein Lieber Wessi" To the people who dont speak German. In Germany, we sometimes differ between "Ossi" (people living in the former DDR region, east) and "Wessi" (people living in the BRD region, west). Both are words used to mock (mostly in a funny way) the other one, because of cultural differences that evolved in those areas and which are sometimes in a (light) conflict.
I was in East Germany many times. The biggest problem was availabilty of foods. The usual answer was "Hamwernich" (we don't have) I only got to try 2 dishes. Goulasch many times and once Hackepeter (raw ground meat) We were scared to eat the Hackepeter so we ordered vodka (Korn) to pour over it😂
@@martintranslations9883steak tartare is a thing. It's super tasty FYI, not sure why you have to be so squeamish. And I've been a vegan for years, smh
@@Wawawalulu I love Mett and Steak Tartar, but pouring vodka over it sounds disgusting, unnecessary and probably would not even kill all the germs (if there were any) unless you grind it to a sludge.
That's kind of interesting. 2 things I liked most were the guy saying that the chairs were just as uncomfortable as in the old East Berlin, and Avec Gunther (the cook) changing his mind about emigrating once the wall came down. I think I can relate to Mr. Gunther's philosophy. Doing something because you want to is Freedom. Doing the same thing because you must, is not.
The jägerschnitzel basically introduced me to German cuisine, and European meat dishes in general As an Indonesian, I did several twists to it . Instead of the pasta and tomato paste, I served it with fried rice
The characterization of the DDR as being "isolated" seems strange: just because they didn't have as open or strong of relations with western countries doesn't mean that they didn't engage with or have many ties to other countries. Plus, the DDR was pretty famous for its electronics and some other products, and as many are saying in the comments here, there were many visitors to the DDR from other countries.
Yeah, that's the oddest thing I hear about the old East Germany: A lot of people who lived through that era and who didn't necessarily appreciate the regime, especially older people, thought the food was better than today's fare that I'm guessing was the food that predominated in the old West Germany.
If I’m remembering correctly, it was revealed in a CIA report that the average diet of a Soviet was more nutritionally dense (with slightly less daily caloric intake, 100 or so) than the American diet. While this doesn’t exactly answer your question, we can infer that, while the west might have had a greater variety of ingredients due to having access to the world market, the Soviets and their satellites might have had more nutritious ingredients albeit with less variety and some scarcity.
I visited friends in the GDR in the mid-90s and actually enjoyed some of the food (Solyanka = "einmal-durch-die-Kueche-gefegt") and beer ( a lovely dark stout, can't remember the name though ). I don't see most of the dishes as "forgotten" though, but that's just my impression.
@@domif.b.7657 Freut mich, dass es geschmeckt hat 😊 Meine Familie kommt aus Lübz, mein Vater hat früher in den Schulferien die Etiketten auf die Flaschen geklebt 😂
I was forced to eat Jägerschnitzel in primary school and I can say with confidence that it is a salty abomination. The other foods are an acquired taste, but generally palatable.
Jägerschnitzel und Tote Oma... my favorite dishes in school. The food was actually quite good. But I didn't like all the sweet meals served on monday or friday much.
I can't stand Jägerschnitzel either. Maybe it somehow tastes good in that restaurant, if they use high quality sausages. But in Kindergarten it was terrible, like almost every dish they served there, except for the Puddingsuppe.
Moritz Waldmann Well, Omas food is the best, that's just how it is. :) In Kindergarten just everything tasted horrible and that's the reason why I can't eat certain things even now, because I'm still grossed out by just thinking about it
Nope most school canteen food was delicious to me. The elder ladies who cooked for us were really great. What I hated were some of the sweet dishes (as someone mentioned here) especially "Hefeklöße mit Heidelbeeren". Yuck. But "Tote Oma" and "Jägerschnitzel"? Yum! 😋👍
i lived just across the street for months, in the big student apartment complex, at time of doing my master nternship in Berlin. i so wanted to go there and try the food but i didnt have the money, i was really on end with money. i would go to the market that's across the parking lot and get some saurkraut, potatoes and blood sausage (it's a good and cheap supermarket!) and cook for myself. that, or instant chinese soup. something baked for weekends.
Too bad I didn't know about this restaurant the last time I was in Berlin. What's even sadder is that I'll probably have forgotten about it again the next time I'm there.
Panierte Jagdwurst hat auch meine Oma gemacht (hat gut geschmeckt, ich bin aber inzwischen Vegetarier) und die ist nur selten aus Hessen rausgekommen, für Tagesausflüge nach RLP, NRW und BY. Im Osten ist sie nie gewesen. Fisch-Soljanka ist absolut lecker und auch keine Erfindung der DDR, sondern eher eine Spezialität aus Pommern und Preußen. Letscho hat man als Urlaubs-Andenken mitgebracht, wie im Westen die italienische Tomatensoße, die kombiniert mit Haschee zur westdeutschen Variante der Bolognese wurde. Man hat halt gekocht mit dem, was man hatte. Und ob man's nun Ketwurst oder Hotdog nennt, ist doch wirklich alles Wurst/wurst. Übrigens hat man auch in Westdeutschland nicht immer alles jederzeit zur Verfügung gehabt. Ich bin auf dem Dorf in Hessen groß geworden. Wir hatten einen kleinen Supermarkt vor Ort, in einen größeren musste man 15 km fahren. In beiden gab's im Sommer keine Orangen oder Mandarinen. Heidelbeeren, Brombeeren, Himbeeren, Pilze usw. hätte man dort nie im Leben angeboten, denn das konnte man wild pflücken oder hatte das im Garten. Mittwochs konnte es schon mal sein, dass die Bananen aus waren, denn geliefert wurde montags und donnerstags. Frische Ananas musste man bestellen, Litschi, Physalis usw. kannte man gar nicht, nicht mal Auberginen gab's, Kürbisse schon gar nicht. Unsere vermeintlich große Auswahl heute ist auch nur Augenwischerei. Warum brauche ich 5 verschiedene Sorten von banalen Cornflakes, 6 Sorten Vollkorn-Knäcke oder 7 Sorten Kaffeesahne. Kaum jemand schmeckt da nen Unterschied. Dafür ist durch Supermärkte und Discounter und industrialisierte Großproduktionen das Angebot an traditionellen regionalen Wurst- und Backwaren weniger geworden. Früher konnte man noch sagen, die Jagdwurst von Metzger A schmeckt mir besser als die Jagdwurst von Metzger B. Da sie immer und jederzeit zur Verfügung stehen soll, kaufen A und B sie jetzt beim selben Produzenten ein und machen sie nicht mehr selbst. Dasselbe hab ich in der Gastronomie, wo dank Convenience-Food auch viel vereinheitlicht worden ist. Die DDR hatte das schon in den 70er und 80er-Jahren aus Devisenmangel, wir haben's heute Gesamtdeutsch wegen "Geiz ist geil" und "so isses halt bequemer". In meiner ehemaligen Uni-Stadt z.B. gibt es inzwischen doppelt soviel Studentenkneipen, wie zu meiner Studienzeit, aber wesentlich weniger Auswahl beim Geschmack. 80% der Kneipen bekommen ihr Essen vorgekocht aus ein- und derselben Großküche bei mir um die Ecke, die auch dem Besitzer der Kneipen gehört. Trotzdem werden manche Stein und Bein schwören, dass die Lasagne in Kneipe X besser schmeckt als die in Kneipe Y.
Most of the dishes died away because it just didn't taste good. Some dishes taste good enough to stay regional. The tomato sauce is just disgusting. Noodles were washed with water to make them bigger and blend.
@@ronnyche2929 that's because it's cheap and provides the day's calories, not because it's good. East German dishes provide only what one *needs* (calories and macros), the Communist way.
That is a matter of preparation. And especially today, when the food is made with good quality ingredients by a motivated chef it is really tasty. Without love and effort and using the cheapest ingredients available things will taste bad, no matter where on planet Earth you get them served. I'm West German so I don't know the potentially awful originals from the economy of scarcity. But don't blame the recipe for the quality of the ingredients. I never ate East German food in Berlin though, probabyl because you need to know where restaurants like these survived between all the other, mostly non-German restaurants in the city. So I probably should remember the Volkskammer for my next Berlin trip. But during my stays in other cities like Dresden, Halle and Gera I tried East German food and it usually was good.
You mean East Germans? Never saw any of these except the Schwedenbecher on a menu… And yeah Jägerschnitzel exists everywhere but its a very different dish compared to this.
Real Jägerschnitzel is real meat with a spicy mushroom sauce with 0 ketchup or tomatos. And of course without pasta, but with perfectly cooked potatos.
1:05 back then in East Germany it would have not been fried in clearyfied butter, since butter was scarse and expensive as well. 3:33 when I worked in Dresden in the mid 1990s my older colleagues from the told me, that Soljanka was made from sausages that were overdue for some days. 4:54 I hate this "not everything was bad back then" Ostalgie. 99% of the East Germans ran over for the D-Mark, bananas, western cars, freedom and else but forgot to earn what they desired.
I much enjoyed watching this video. I had to run it back to find the name of the restaurant, Volkskammer das design restaurant and then found the owners name, Aurick Günther. I wish I had seen this video two months ago so I could have eaten there when I was in Berlin for Christmas. Now I will just have to make another visit!
Who wants it? Time goes on. The country is now reunited over thirty years. I would think that the food is of better quality, better taste. No more German Democratic Republic.......
Most people were informants themselves. Spoke up openly against communism? Your neighbours would report you, a blacked out gaz showed up in the middle of the night, and best case, you'd be interrogated for days, maybe tortured, worst case, never seen again. Your neighbours would get a small reward. Mass reporting innocent people or people who weren't liked for the reward was very common.
@BenGunns *W*sauce has actually become established throughout German cuisine as a seasoning for fricassee or ragout fin. Only the correct pronunciation is still a bit of a problem here...😉
We're happy to shed some light on them both 🙂 check out our report on the north Germany's legendary fish sandwich here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2PPB-ZmS9Uk.html 🐟
@@DWFood watched it before and it was good. It was also more of an overall state ment since both regions get rarely any attention in most videos about Germany on you tube
The Jägerschnitzel had a full recipe, go for it. For Soljanka what you need is: 1-2 glasses of Letscho, pickles with some juice, leftover pork steaks and sausages from BBQ, or whatever sausage you're able to find in your fridge (Salami, Doctorskya, etc), some corn if you're fancy, spices, water. You can add a spoonful of sour cream when it's on a plate, eat with some baguette (or rolls that you cut like a baguette)
No need. Western food has become like that. The pasta sauce, they reduced the spices and onions. And garlic. So it is tastes like ketchup. And I tried a couple of pizza and they tasted like pizza made with ketchup too. You either pay through the nose or get some watered down DDR stuff nowadays. Show shall ism has come to America.
I¨m absolutely a westerner,but this is interesting,and by the way in my very personal opinion food has nothing to do with politics!I was 1 time in East Berlin,good memories!!
East Germany and North Korea had both a diplomatic and a trade relationship. Person cult was part of everyday life in the GDR - The other person is of course Erich Honnecker.
@@emirvmendozaThis photo of the store display was taken in 1984 when Kim Il Sung visited the GDR. If you are interested in the topic, this DW article might interest you: p.dw.com/p/2qtxH
There are people who want to even go back to Soviet Uzbekistan, so there certainly are such people I mean for people with low aspirations in life it was good, you didn't need to look for a job, the state would give you one... And even better, you didn't even need to do a lot in these jobs if you didn't want, you could just drink vodka all day and collect the paycheck, imitating work here and there
That wonderful East German chef didn't like being forced to think a certain way. So he wanted to leave East Germany. I wonder if he knows that is what is happening in America today.
My English workmate visited his East German penpal. The mother lined up all day for bananas for him. He said no ,you eat them because I can buy as many as I want back home. The kids called him a liar, the parents told him later they understood but couldn't say anything in front of the children.
So, just confirms what I always thought: German food consists of potato, pork, bread and beer to survive, and anything remotely appealing and delicious have French, Italian, Austrian, East European and Scandinavian roots.
Well not entirely. The island of Ernst thälmann technically still belongs to East Germany but in a symbolic sense. So officially it doesn't but unofficially there's a small iceberg to it.
Neuroscience meanwhile explained how and why we forget the bad things and only remember the good times. His concession about that he wanted to leave the country because of not having the freedom of thought and expression followed by a "but there were good times,too" came over a bit stumbling. Food remembrance i see often in the context of how we were imprinted in our childhood. My mother fled when the wall was built and some of the dishes i grew up with are from the time before the wall was built. Some of those may seem strange i guess to others nowadays :)
I don't know- he seems to remember just fine why he was trying to leave, but naturally he remembers good times too. It was his home, in both time and space. Even adults have that experience. When you add childhood to it, which he presumably spent there, it adds some good memories for most, without knowledge of the bad because kids don't always see it. Plus, it's gone now, so the bad parts don't threaten him anymore.
This food is not gaining favour or growing in popularity with anyone but former East Germans suffering from Ostalgie and forgetting about the bad times, trust me. No one would eat this regularly unless they absolutely had to.
What? Broiler is just another name for a grilled chicken. Food wagons that sell grilled chicken are also still common in Western Germany. Ragout Fin is maybe not very common but more alocal speciality but it is not more weird than other local specialities. Soljanka is a great thing for part of a meal on a party. It is a common thing not only in restaurants that are on an Ostalgie-trip. Also not more weird tha a sweet-saur soup from a Chinese restaurant. Tomato sauce from ketchup, Yes, I garee. it has less quality than regular one and definitly more sugar. Jägerschnitzel. I was very disappoited about it, when I first had one because I also expected a real Schnitzel. I see it as a big downgrade having this instead a normal schnitzel. But it is an upgrade when you put this on a bake roll instead of a regular slice of chasseur sausage. It is more for a breakfast or part of a brunch. Also not more weird than Wurstsalat which is a regualr dish in South-West Germany and Switzerland. So your statement that nobody would eat it is nonsens. Yes they are basic dishes with cheap ingrediants, but this is the case for most of the traditinal German dishes.
@@helloweener2007 I said "nobody but East Germans suffering from Ostalgie", at least quote me correctly. Btw there's a reason also why German food from any region is not exactly world famous nor beloved outside its tiny borders (unlike say, French or Italian food, if we're going to focus on Europe for now). That's despite the fact that many countries around the world have sizable populations of people with German origin (including my own in fact). It's not just marketing, some cultures' cuisines are just objectively better. Germans are great at many things. Food's not one of them. If you want to hold onto that delusion, be my guest though, but the rest of us who know what good food is can't be tricked.
@@angelikaklaer6198 I used to live in Italy at one time and learned how to make northern Italian food from Piemonte from a real Nonna. One time I saw my (east German) mother-in-law making "pasta" for my niece - using tomato ketchup and butter as the "sauce" 😭 I just about died. My heart sank to new lows that day as a result of the travesty that is East German cooking. I'm saddened to think my niece Is growing up on "food" like that. I love my mil so much but if I'm honest about it, aside from maybe two dishes, she and most east German women of her generation can't cook worth a damn. They think mayonnaise and pepper are "spicy" and they are deathly afraid of garlic, herbs and almost any kind of spice. So as you can imagine, their "food" is either super bland or all you taste is salt 😞
Bullshit. We always had meat and vegetables. We were one of the biggest meat producer in europe, exporting it to the west, in massive amounts. And the jägerschnitzel s misunderstud by the west, because what the call jägerschnitzel is a correctly a "schnitzel jägerinnen art".
