Cape welcomes fall with feasting at fests

Cape Cod Times - By Gwenn Friss - gfriss@capecodonline.com

With chef Gert Rausch cooking, the Aqua Grille has featured an Oktoberfest menu at this time each year and donated part of the proceeds to charity. That's happening again this year but, for the first time, the Sandwich restaurant is pitching a 60-foot tent on its lawn, hiring a German band to play such traditional dances as the schunkel, performed with linked arms, and hosting a full-scale celebration Oct. 11.

"They're hoping to get 800 to 1,000 people," says Sarah Bassett, spokesperson for the eatery.

The first Oktoberfest was celebrated Oct. 12, 1810, when Bavarian Crown Prince Louis, later King Louis I of Bavaria, married Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. According to the Web site www.history.com, the Bavarian royalty invited the citizens of Munich to attend the festivities, held on the fields in front of the city gates. The decision to repeat the festivities and the horse races the subsequent year gave rise to the tradition of the annual Oktoberfest.

The Cape event, alongside the Cape Cod Canal, runs from 1 to 5 p.m. Tickets are $14 and include both admission and seven food and beverage tickets. For those 12 and younger, admission is $8 and includes four food and beverage tickets. Additional tickets may be purchased for $2 each.

Proceeds go to the Sandwich Emergency Heating Assistance Fund, created by Friends of the Sandwich Council on Aging and the Aqua Grille to help needy residents of all ages to heat their homes this winter.

During last year's fundraising, Rausch says, the two most popular German specialties were, by far, the wiener schnitzel with potato salad (three tickets) and potato pancakes or Kartoffelpuffer at one ticket each.

Also on the menu are grilled bratwurst and champagne sauerkraut (two tickets), bouletten or charbroiled Berlin burgers (two tickets); salzstangen or a German pretzel (one ticket), imported beer and wine (two tickets) and Cape Cod Beer (two tickets). Cape Cod Beer owners Todd and Beth Marcus are donating 16 half-barrels of beer.

Oktoberfest 2007  

Cape Cod Times - By Johanna Crosby - STAFF WRITER

Tips for cooking German dishes

Oktoberfest dates back to Oct. 12, 1810, when Crown Prince Ludwig I of Bavaria wed Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen. The residents of Munich were invited to join in celebrating the royal wedding with a party that lasted 16 days. The German Oktoberfest has continued every year since.

The tradition also has hopped the pond, and is still going strong in the United States today — 197 years later.

The German-American Club of Cape Cod held its annual Oktoberfest last Saturday at the Masonic Lodge in Centerville with a traditional meal of bratwurst, along with dancing and entertainment provided by the Cape Cod Bavarian Band.

"We have 80 members and we're the only German club on the Cape," says president Charles Firnhaber.

Whether it was planned or not, the original wedding festival occurred when the spring's stockpiled beers had to be depleted to make room for the fall's production.

From its festive origins, Oktoberfest in Munich has evolved into the largest beer festival in the world: a commercial bash of brewery tents, food vendors, brass bands, costumes and carnival rides that draws millions of visitors from all over the world. It's estimated that 7 million liters of beer are downed during the three-week period.

It's a big beer-drinking party, says Rausch, who grew up in a small town near the city of Stuttgart.

This is the seventh season the German-born chef has been bringing a taste of the festival to the Cape by hosting Oktoberfest at the Aqua Grille in Sandwich.

Typically, October is a slow month in the restaurant business. Rausch and co-owner John Zartarian thought they could boost traffic by offering something different, and it worked.

"People come from all over," says Zartarian. "Many of our clientele are older and enjoyed German food when they served in the military in Germany or on their travels to Europe."

During the fall fest, which runs from Columbus Day to Oct. 28, the regular menu is curtailed and Rausch cooks traditional German dishes. An extensive German menu is offered at dinner nightly and select German items are served at lunch. The chef is assisted in the kitchen by young German people he hires through friends in his homeland. To set the mood, the waterfront restaurant which offers views of the Cape Cod Canal, is decorated festively and German music plays in the background.

Rausch uses recipes he learned when he was young, some handed down in his family.

The hearty German fare is hardly low-calorie. Instead, traditional German food is considered very heavy, Rausch says. But his attitude is that everything in moderation is the spice of life.

"You can eat all kinds of food as long as you don't eat too much of it," he says.

German food is popular in pockets of the United States, Rausch says, where there are large populations of people of German descent — such as Chicago, Milwaukee, Pennsylvania and Texas. It has enjoyed a good reception on the Cape.

The first year Rausch wasn't sure rabbit would go over. He was surprised he went through seven cases.

Yet some German dishes don't appeal to Americans, Rausch says, such as eel. Nor do Americans like the German way of cooking fish with the head on.

Rausch primarily uses wine rather than beer in his cooking, which includes white wine with rabbit and German burgundy in fish dishes. But he also does an onion-beer sauce with a breaded pork cutlet and apple mashed potatoes.

Rausch has no problem finding the ingredients he needs to make authentic-tasting German food.

"There are good sausage houses that produce almost every German sausage," he says.

Rausch chose familiar items for the Oktoberfest menu, including Rheinischer sauerbrauten (beef marinated in red wine and vinegar) served with red cabbage and serviettenknödel (German bread dumplings) topped with a sweet and sour sauce; schweinesteak (breaded pork cutlet) with sauerkraut, apple mashed potatoes and Bavarian onion-beer sauce; and jägerschnitzel (breaded veal) in a creamy mushroom sauce. It also features Venison Schnitzel Baden Baden topped with game sauce.

Game dishes, such as venison, are very popular in Germany especially during hunting season, Rausch says.

The menu also features two fish dishes: lachs helgoland (poached salmon) in a red wine and shallot glace) and kabeljau in kartoffel kruste, native cod in a potato herb crust similar to a potato pancake.

Appetizers (vorspeisen) include wurstsalat with German sausage, cheese, pickles and onions; hamburger herring salat with pickles, apples and sour cream sauce; and schwärzwalder pate with Waldorf and cucumber salads.

Rausch caps the entrees with what he calls "very standard" German desserts, including black forest cake and apple strudel.

German beers and Reislings are also added to the menu.

This year the restaurant will offer entertainment featuring Rudy Schwarzer and his three-piece Cape Cod Bavarian Band from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Rausch worked in restaurants in Munich, Paris, Switzerland and Italy. He came to the United States on a whim in 1971 and worked for a season at the Paddock Restaurant in Hyannis, which is owned by John and Maxine Zartarian. After working in different parts of the country and running his own restaurants, he returned to the Cape when the Zartarian family invited him to help run the Aqua Grille.