Pamela VANDYKE PRICE
Translations, in terms of media, are always tricky. For example, when some great com- poser sets some `typical' folk songs, and these are rendered with impeccable tech- nique. by an evening-dressed character on a brilliantly lit platform before attentive musical intelligentsia, I feel fearfully em- barrassed. The singer is wailing refinedly about love or money or death or war, and
everybody's listening ! I want to be half- tipsy, very happy, smell the garlic and the sweat, be hardly able to see who's perform- ing—and get the magic only if it's there to be given. But one does almost anything for love or money and who am I to sneer, having been obliged to render Lady Macbeth and some of the choicer Shakespearian sonnets in midlands drawing-rooms (for my mum) and audition studios (for the chance of a job). The Nibelung's Ring in Yiddish, on ice and in modern dress at the Roundhouse could be subject to the same comment (and, come to think of it, might be quite fun, which is an adjective you cannot really apply to Wagner otherwise).
So the translation of folk to fashion is awkward for me and I think that the transla- tion of cooking—as representative of a coun- try—to cuisine— as representative of an eat- ing establishment—could be equally difficult. And cuisine isn't really cooking anyway and vice versa. Can one move a chef from the quirks of his stove and the attentions of his - trained brigade to alien portals?
Well, this has become a pleasant pro- motional gimmick in many restaurants, and the Hilton has had the good idea Of merely moving its chefs around, so to speak. The current festival of German food, which lasts until 28 March at the London Hilton, in- volves the dishes of the Hiltons in Dusseldorf, Mainz and Berlin. The In- ternational Restaurant has been perked into chic gemiitlichkeit via checked cloths and chairbacks, wooden service platters, butter sculptures of peasant types (Sainsburys once told me that there was still one retired person who could sculpt butter such as I remember from before 1939—where is he now?), and an orchestra that is atmospheric without being deafening. Preconceived notions of German food tend to be bounded by the dumpling, sauerkraut, wilrst limits, but in variably one is agreeably surprised: the Germans take their food seriously, of course, but it is neither dull nor stodgy. Nor, even in these elegant surroundings, is ,it very ex- pensive. The quality of the ingredients makes it satisfying even if you choose a simple dish rather than a complicated one. When I dined there, the duck with black cherries, carved before the table, and flamed in kirsch, was first-rate and, at £3 for two, was not as dear as an equivalent might have been 'in other restaurants of lesser calibre.
You can drink beer or wine and, although our Bernkasteler Badstube Spatlese 1906 of Lauerberg was delicious, I admit that the finest German wines do seem to me to be most enjoyable when taken quite alone, as components of a friendly gathering rather than a meal. Of course, you can drink a crisp, young Rhine or Mosel with rich food—but the finesses of the greater wines deserve slow appreciation, partnered only by rather plain cake or fruit, in my view. In the coffee park, outside the International Restaurant, the management had the charm- ing notion of stationing a number of flower- ing cherry trees; I should have liked to have drunk even more wine in this `spring in Park Lane' atmosphere, and I wonder whether there might not be an admirable promotional opening for German wines by setting up just such a `pseudo-terrasse' in the centre of Lon- don, where one might watch the world and savour something a little better than one can always afford with a meal? A bay window on London in a truly chic wine bar (and British wine, too, if one wished) could be a tourist attraction for many wine countries.
If you can't get to the Hilton in time for the German food festival, it's worth wat- ching for subsequent national or regional promotions. I suggest, though, that the organisers pander a bit more to the ignorance of most of us in composing typical meals. We've all progressed via the made-up menus of Chinese restanrants, at set prices, to bold choice of the numbers in an un- compromisingly Chinese eating place. Could short, typical, priced menus of regions and countries—such as are offered at the Le Francais, 259 Fulham Road, sw3, or those that any Cyprus or Greek restaurant will happily assemble for the beginner, be com- posed for these more lavish festivals? The menu descriptions often err on the side of enthusiasm rather than accuracy and I bet that `Warrne Weinschaumcreme mit Musik' isn't really just 'A very light sweet prepared at your table'. But one does say 'More, please I ' I certainly hope to be around if and when the Beirut, Cyprus, Tunis and other Hiltons send their chefs on the Park Lane circuit.
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