Topic: Eats n Drinks
My friend Russ arranged a birthday dinner for his other half Christopher and their friend Jamie for today. A third birthday boy was invited, but cancelled at the last minute. As it happened, the party was about 18 people, a few of whom I knew, a number of whom I didn't, and some I'd just met in passing at Russ & Christopher's annual holiday parties. The venue was Schnitzelhaus (http://www.schnitzel-haus.net), a SoMa (South of Market) restaurant serving German and Austrian food.
I ordered the Knackwürste mit Linsen und Spätzle (German-style knack sausages with lentils and German pasta), along with the potato soup. Russ's invitation email warned that "the awesome potato soup will have you farting garlic for two days". The soup was indeed awesome, but, as to the latter claim, I'll have to get back to you... The food was good, and I enjoyed it, managing to almost clean my plate.
Unsurprisingly, the party went crazy with the beer. After the initial round we ordered, they started ordering pairs of 2-litre "boots"... big beer glasses shaped like a boot. There ensued a rather silly set of drinking games around the boots. The idea is you'd take a drink from the boot and pass it to the person next to you. But if second boot caught up to you while you were still holding the first, you were obligated to drink the entire contents of the boot in your hands. Needless to say, as people got busy chatting they're sort of hold onto one boot, and then react with horror when they realized the other was nearly upon them. Deer in headlights time. You've never seen men drink and pass the buck so fast as when threatened with having to guzzle down a beer that big.
Every time someone would look close to finishing one of the boots, people would start chanting "Das boot! Das Boot!", which, of course, means "the boat". I suspect they should have been shouting "Die Aufladung!" ("the boot"), but that's too much for a bunch of drunk Americans. The fellow to my left ended up polishing off the bottom of two boots, and I ended up finishing off the end of boot #11.
The entire affair was documented by continuously passing Russ's camera up and down the table. I dread seeing some of the photographs...
All in all it was a loud, fun evening. After warning us that breaking a boot would set the breakie back 60 bucks, our waitress joined in drinking from a couple of the boots, and even climbed up on our table at one point. Our party got very silly very quickly, and every time a party would walk into the restaurant we'd cheer and applaud their arrival. That got some fun reactions. The whole table would break out singing to a few of the songs heard on the sound system, and one of these had out waitress prompting us to do Y M C A type arm movements to the lyrics. Surprisingly, given all that flailing, only one glass was a casualty of the evening, and no boots were broken. Oh, and as to the boots: our party went through 14. That's 28 liters of beer... or an average of a half dozen bathroom runs per attendee.
Danke schön? Gute Nacht!
Posted by molyneaux
at 12:01 AM PDT
Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 1:47 AM PDT
