Oktoberfest In Pune

It wouldn’t be the early fall if it wasn’t for my traditional celebration of my German heritage — Oktoberfest! This year is new because I am celebrating it in a place with very little German influence, little to know understanding of the holiday, and in 87 degree weather! We actually celebrated it over two weekends. I will call them Feast and Party.

Feast – We went to the Oktoberfest brunch at the Marriott Suites here in Pune. The Marriott Suites has a chef, Christian Huber, who has German ancestry but is actually Italian. He splits his time between two Italian restaurants – one at the Marriott Suites in Koregoan Park and the other at the JW Marriott near Baner. He loves being able to bring some of his cooking methods and dishes to Pune. Anyway, he loves Oktoberfest so he themed this particular Sunday afternoon brunch after it.

The food was fantastic and honestly made my month. Just to have pork sausage galore, GOOD sauerkraut, cabbage salad, ground mustard, and the ultimate joy – Schweinshaxe. It was buffet style.

The food was fantastic. Several different types of chicken and pork sausages, leberkase, and various chicken and meat dishes. In a mostly veg country it was great to sit back and feel the meat sweats roll down my brow. Chef Huber did a fantastic job putting really authentic food out there. Congrats! And of course the one thing I didn’t mention is the pretzels and cheese sauce…yummy.

In Pune it is actually VERY difficult to find pretzels even the bagged ones. So it was an extra treat to be able to eat these Bavarian styled salted bread items. They had an all you can eat pasta station and my wife figured out if you have them just cook the cheese sauce then you could use it as a dip for the pretzels. Wunderbar!

They also had spaetzle that you could choose from at the pasta station so Tenley got to enjoy kaise on her spaetzle.

We of course also had beer. I have written about this before but the beer in India is just not that good. First of all they do not allow imports, or at least they are very difficult to find. They do have international brands like Carlsberg, Becks, Bud, etc. but it is just the labeling on the can — it is all made in India. And as the Germans say, what makes their beer so good (other than centuries of perfecting it) is the water. So I am embarrassed to admit I only had 3 beers during our brunch – the only options were a light beer and a local hefe. Both were not that good. But the food more than made up for it!

Now on to the Party. This was the next Sunday at the Pune Horse Race Track. The official Pune Oktoberfest cosponsored by several German companies. Now we went on Sunday which is more the family day and we go there early as we had to leave for a Garba party that was later that afternoon. So it was fairly empty.

The big party is on Saturday night where they actually stay open until midnight and have a live oompah ban flown in from Germany. Anyway when we were there the surround sound was playing various classic rock hits which I found a bit odd but I enjoyed it.

So where the Marriott had great food, the Oktoberfest was a disappointment. The advertising flyer promoted “German cuisine” of which there was barely any. They had probably 10 restaurant vendors on site – most cooking local food, one Mexican stand (yeah shocked by that too), and one stand that did sausages. I bet you can’t guess which one we went to.

This was the only shot of what one of the pork sausages. They usually put mustard and mayo on but my wife just likes mayo. I don’t like mayo on my dogs, so just got mustard on mine. No sauerkraut, no cabbage, no schweinbraten, nothing else. Oh well, first world problems. Tenley liked it.

Ok let’s focus on the beer. A bit better than the Marriott’s selection. It was a local brewery called Kimaya. The beers still weren’t even close to as good as German beer but they were much better than the week before. Here was the selection list.

So we sampled all the beers except the Hefe. They went down well in the heat around us. Of course Tenley got jealous and wanted her cold dessert so she got a gelato ice cream, which she proceeded to share with me. Bless her gentle heart.

We spent about 2 hours there in total. I think next year Tami and I will go on the Saturday night one. More people, more energy, and real German music. However, it was worth the $10 admittance fee just to see the flags, hang out on a sunny afternoon and enjoy some somewhat decent food — even if it lacked all the “Authenticity”. We look forward to having a better game plan and also to enjoying some real German beer when we come back for holiday in the US this December. Until then Prost from the Kemmling’s!