October 29, 2005
Hans’s Barbeque and Brewery
As the many Chinese and Indian buffets available in the U.S. testify, you can compensate for a lack of authenticity with four simple syllables: all you can eat. When forced to forage for his own meal, a diner’s sense of adventure is aroused and he tends to be more forgiving of culinary oversights, as if he himself were complicit in the cruel farce which spawned such mediocre ethnic food. I, for one, will accept almost any poor imitation as long as I’m allowed to scoop it onto my plate myself from a shiny rectangular tub.
I was recently lured to a “Western” buffet in Xi’an by the promise of microbrews on tap (There are about ten kinds of domestic beer available in Xi’an supermarkets and restaurants, all of which taste exactly the same: like watered-down Rolling Rock). The drinks proved disappointing, but the atmosphere exceeded all expectations. Judging from the décor, primarily vintage advertisements for German beers, the restaurant was going for some sort of Teutonic dining experience (indeed, the name translates to something like “Hans’s Barbeque and Brewery House”). The wait staff, however, was dressed like something out of Laura Ingalls Wilder: cowboy hats and overalls for the men, bonnets and dresses for the ladies.
There was a buffet, of course, full of such Western favorites as spicy noodles and pickled garlic, but this was not the establishment’s main attraction. Every few minutes, a ranch hand would come by the table with a piece of barbequed meat on a stick, carve a slice off for everyone, and hurry on. The varieties of meat Hans finds to spit and grill for his patrons seem endless, though perhaps by the time we hit chicken heart and spam the old German brewmaster was running out of ideas.
Best of all, we were given a comment card after our meal. It had the usual pictographic representations of our levels of satisfaction (frowny face = bad, smiley face = good), but, upon closer inspection, all the available check boxes were accompanied by neutral faces. I guess even in a Western-style restaurant, the Chinese disapprove of excessive displays of emotion.