al Pastor

At the edge of the Stuttgart city center, still in the pedestrianized zone, a  small mall was opened which is filled with such insignificant, trashy stores that it is anchored by Urban Outfitters. Das Gerber, as it is called, does actually have some partially redeeming features apart from the Urban Outfitters and the fact it offers new housing above the mall. In the basement, there are not one but two grocery stores.

Everyone knows I love density and downtowns, but the problem is that to live downtown, you really need to offer grocery stores downtown. So I was pleased to see there were two offered in the lower level of the mall. Aldi, the discount store, and Edeka. This Edeka is actually quite impressive. They have a really decent selection for German grocery stores, especially 'inner city' branches, and they sell different kinds of beer. In a country where the beer offerings are typically limited to what is brewed in a 30 mile radius, they sell IPAs, pale ales, American craft brews, and some Belgians. All wildly overpriced: an American made IPA, for example, can run about $4 a bottle.

I drink, on average, between three to five beers a week. Mostly during the weekend, and mostly German beer, with perhaps one exotic thrown in. If I'm drinking something brewed outside of lager and pils and hefe territory, I am going to relish it.

For example, right now, I am drinking a Warsteiner Herb, which is basically a Heineken. It is entirely unremarkable, but I was lured in by the misleading pictures of hops on the bottle.

Anyway, I am getting sidetracked here. I really wanted to talk about Mexican food. Back to the basement of Das Gerber....

...where we find a new fresh-Mex style of counter fast food called Bugan. The shop is so new, the website on the brochure isn't online yet. Normally, I skip places billing themselves as Mexican. Even in the US, I approach Mexican restaurants with extreme skepticism north of Arizona and east of Texas. This one, however, was trumpeting its al pastor.

Constant reader, you will know my feelings on al pastor since I have written about it a lot in Mexico City. A cultural adaptation from Lebanese-Mexicans, marinated pork cooked with pineapple on a vertical spit, it is the taco of Mexico City. Bugan, does in fact, correctly point out in its glossy brochure that al pastor originates there. But they get everything else wrong. For one, they are roasting chicken on a spit, not pork, and narry a pineapple in sight. Additionally, they serve it as a burrito, which is totally alien to Mexico City. It wasn't bad, to be honest, just more like a Mexican themed doner kebab. What was bad was their spelling of quesadilla as 'casadia'. That was painful.  It was like poking a wound of the distance to Mexico.

The whole experience resolved me to make more Mexican food, so I straightaway went to the Edeka and bought ingrediants to make sopa de lima, a limey chicken soup from the yucatan.