Best of the Wursts at Germany’s Godzilla Delis

“The Germans have two souls,” Goethe once said. They also must have two stomachs, something like my first car, an early Volkswagen beetle with two gas tanks--the main tank and the spare. That was my conclusion as I wandered, dazzled, through the enormous delicatessens of urban Germany, some of them consuming the better part of a city block. Nowhere else is the enormous prosperity of a country--or the intimidating appetites of its citizens--more obvious. The neighborhood deli in America is a pale offshoot, a brave little leftover of these immaculate banquet markets, clotted with comestibles.

The way one would choose the shiniest red apples, I selected four of these Godzilla delis. KaDeWe in Berlin headed the list because it’s the biggest and the best. Alois Dallmayr in Munich is the most traditional. Kafer was tossed in because it’s also in Munich and so aesthetically pleasing. Kaufhof in Dusseldorf was a personal selection because of its endless waves of seafood and a wine cellar that went on forever.

KaDeWe is actually Berlin’s largest department store. Its sixth floor food mart is considered to be the proto-deli. Slathered lavishly across 55,000 square feet of floor space, it is the largest food department in Europe and the second largest in the world.

It holds in its larder 30,000 different kinds of edibles. I didn’t know the human stomach had such range, such virtuosity. Cheese accounts for a major portion of the diversity. KaDeWe offers 1,800 different varieties, which can be served with a choice of the store’s 400 kinds of bread.

Each week, 20,000 tons of fresh fruit, vegetables, fish, meat and cheese find their way from the four corners of the world to the counters of KaDeWe. That’s not counting the aisles of tinned biscuits and caviar, jars of jams, bottles of wine, tubs of mustards and thousands of cans of exotic concoctions. The fresh produce ranges from New Zealand apples to Mozambique fish. And, of course, there were all those plump German bratwursts, liverwursts, knockwursts and wursts I never met before. All of it is displayed with irresistible artistry. It is an epicurean temple where temptation lurks down every aisle.

If your appetite overtakes you before you can get back to your hotel room with your bags of treats--not to worry--the master food purveyors of Europe, including Fauchon and Bocuse, have set up booths right there in the midst of the mother lode of bounty. You can pull up a stool and order crepes or the specials of the day built around the fresh deliveries, then watch your chef deftly prepare your pleasure. There are also beer booths dispensing sizzling sausages and pit-stop pastry stands. The aromas are tantalizing. It’s a smart, almost subliminal, merchandising move.

The sixth-floor deli has its own express elevators in the banks of 44 escalators and more than 20 elevators.

KaDeWe, which stands for Kaufhaus des Westerns, is big enough to contain an Olympic stadium plus two football stadiums, and carries everything from a little black Chanel dress to beach balls. There are beauty salons for men, women and dogs. It opened in 1907 on Tauentzien Strasse at the Wittenberg Platz, neither a fashionable street nor a shopping area. Its sheer volume attracted customers from day one, and today the Tauentzien Strasse is the most popular shopping boulevard in Berlin.

Business was interrupted during World War II when an American bomber dropped in on the patio.

The recovery, like that of the country itself, has been remarkable. Last year, KaDeWe generated more than $350 million in sales.

Nothing as crass as sales figures can be coaxed from the mouth of Georg Randkofer, owner of Alois Dallmayr, Munich’s famous food emporium. Neither will the discreet Herr Randkofer divulge the names of his celebrity customers, but he did let slip, in explanation: “We attach great importance to the fact that the King and Queen of Sweden can shop here during their frequent visits to Munich without having to read about it in the press the next day. Those who shop to be seen go elsewhere.”

The customer is king at Dallmayr, figuratively and often literally. More than three centuries old, it was the first delicatessen in Munich. It made its name by being purveyor to generations of Bavarian kings and to the German emperor in Berlin. Every day, stately wagons of highly polished wood emblazoned with “Alois Dallmayr,” and the Dallmayr coat of arms in gleaming gold, would be manned by coachmen in elegant livery and drawn by a team of beautiful black horses. The distinctive wagons made the Dallmayr daily deliveries an event of import. By the turn of the century, the establishment was one of Europe’s leading delicatessens.

The store is still a family-run business and has added a gourmet shop, gift shop, party service and fine restaurant.

The aspect of the deli as church or temple was heightened for us as--whipped by winter--we ducked into the store’s main entrance. The central hall is a sanctuary from the vicissitudes of life and weather. Massive marble columns uphold a vaulted ceiling. Marble cherubs are splashed by a fountain whose waters harbor crabs and crayfish. Antlers line the walls. We could smell fine tobacco, chocolate and the most fragrant coffee in the world.

Coffee has become a Dallmayr trademark. The store creates its own exclusive blends and stores them in huge, lovely urns of Nymphenburg porcelain.

Teas enjoy similar regal storage in porcelain jars, tiny pots, tins and boxes, all stacked with the mystifying order of an old-fashioned apothecary.

People were lined up five deep in front of the confectionery counters, deciding on plum-size mounds of chocolate sheltering runny raspberries or crunchy bits of nuts. There were glistening fruit tarts and powdered creations fluted with cream and drizzled with frosting, slabs of gingerbread and dozens of kinds of butter cookies. I could hardly speak to place my order. Only the press of the hungry crowd forced a decision. I pointed to a gingerbread man, paid my money, said my danke and had his head off before I left the store.

Another Munich classic is Kafer. Not actually a delicatessen, but a restaurant with a boutique and renowned food department, it can’t be ignored by even a casual epicurean.

People come to Kafer, however, as much for the decor as for the food. Everything changes seasonally: the items in the boutique, the hangings on the wall, the restaurant menu and the food department offerings.

Christmas calls for the most extravagant displays of all. Last year, it cost the proprietors $50,000 to deck the halls with boughs of holly. They also hung hundreds of tiny ornamented Christmas trees from the ceilings. Everything smelled of pine, bread and cinnamon. It was a labyrinth of delights. The food was sensual; it nurtured as well as nourished. The menu is a blend of classic German cuisine and lighter continental fare with nouvelle nuances and seasonal specialties.

We worked up an appetite shopping in the labyrinthine food departments, finding beluga caviar, Rhine wines and fruit that looked like jewels. I succumbed even to ladybug potholders. There were also ladybug linens, dishes, lamps, mugs, waste cans and candles, for the cute red bug is Kafer’s mascot.

To celebrate the season, the restaurant menu proffered goose and venison with wild berries and clear dark sauces. As we dined, a light snow began to fall, and by the time we left, the orange berries on the hawthorn trees outside were nicely frosted.

My first contact with a true German delicatessen was the Kaufhof in Dusseldorf. I was overwhelmed by the profusion, the variety. It was voluptuous. I found a fish counter awash in waves of caviar, shrimp, bright lobster, delicate salmon. The meat market was valenced in sausages and salamis, and studded with Westphalian hams, parades of pates, beef in crusty pastry. A whole department was devoted to salads, with more potato salads than I knew existed and pickles beyond counting--big crunchy ones in vats and pinky-sized pickles in jars. Vinegars came bottled with sprigs of herbs arranged as embryonic still-lifes.

The wine cellar went on forever. The roll call included not only the French Champagnes and Bordeaux, but Mosels and Rhines in mind-boggling abundance: Rhine-hessen, Rheinpfalz, Rheingau, Frankreich, Franfen, Baden and more. It was a litany. There were pear, raspberry and orange wines with labels lovely enough to frame. I saw cheeses plumped with giant walnuts, chevre all snowy on the outside and sprinkled with a field of chives. Raclette rubbed shoulders with paprika cheese; creamy, runny rounds of infinite variety and pungent wedges suggesting mysterious origins and dark cellars.

There were bars for tasting almost everything. I wished that I, like my first Volkswagen, had two tanks, one of which I would save for the dozen kinds of coffeecake.

GUIDEBOOK

Germany’s

Godzilla Delis

In Berlin: KaDeWe, 21-24 Tauentzien Strasse.

In Dusseldorf: Kaufhof, 1 Konigsallee.

In Munich: Alois Dallmayr, 14-15 Diener Strasse. Kafer, 73 Prinzgegen Strasse.