Michael We Germans in exile often crave familiar foods that aren't available in America. Examples include fresh rolls and pretzels, Duplo, blood sausage, peanut flips, and the hazelnut chocolate spread Nutella. In large US cities, you might occasionally find a deceptively similar imitation product on the supermarket shelf, but it can't be compared to the German Nutella.
Recently, travelers from Germany brought a jar of Nutella, and we conducted a blind test: a difference like day and night. The German Nutella tastes much more intensely of chocolate and nuts, while the American imitation is really bland and dull. Nutella entry onWikipedia The translation to English is: "It even states what ingredients the individual countries use. By the way, did you know that Nutella originally comes not from Germany but from Italy?
And recently I was at the Crossroads-Market Crossroads-Market In Mountain View, after more than ten years of unsuccessful searching, peanut flips were finally found. And they were actually rated as indistinguishable from the original by peanut flips connoisseur Angelika. The Iranian who runs the Crossroads store mainly sells Russian fish and sausage specialties, but also carries Jacobs Krönung coffee, Kinder chocolate, Pfanni potato dumpling packages, and German-style blood and liver sausages.
And a little further down San Antonio Road is the German butcher. Dittmer's Here's the translation to English:
", the Leberkäs, Kassler, calf liver sausage, Landjäger, WeiÃwürste, Hendlmaier mustard (8 dollars a jar!) has. He's not quite mastered making WeiÃwurst, but otherwise the products are top-notch. The nearby German bakery Esther's Bakery supplies the butcher with rolls and pretzels, but they often taste as if they were from the day before. However, what can you expect for $1.80 per pretzel in the diaspora? In Germany, Brezen Baur would sweep Esther away like a tornado sweeps away a loose tumbleweed.
The most fascinating thing about Dittmer's Butchery is the consistently Mexican sales staff. While in California they often only speak broken English, the Dittmer employees not only speak perfect English but also immediately understand what I mean when I say "calf liver sausage," "Landjäger," or "Leberkäse." It seems that Dittmer conducts special training! By the way, Dittmer himself is about our age, the son of German immigrants, and he only speaks a little German himself.
In the trunk of our car, there is a special cooler bag, and Dittmer sells bottles of frozen mineral water, so I can transport the highly sought-after meat and sausages to San Francisco, located 50 kilometers north, without any damage despite the Californian heat. What won't we do!