Barbarossa Restaurant, Sanur.
A great place with an unfortunate name. To me when I see the word ‘Barbarossa’ it conjures up the German invasion of Russia in June 1941. That invasion led to mass murder by German SS units as they tried to kill off all those ‘under men’ they saw as not being really human beings. Sadly, I am living through the 21st century parallel, as the people of Gaza are being systematically murdered.
A quick bit of research followed. Frederick Barbarossa was King of Germany in the 12th Century. He eventually became the Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 to 1190. He was known as a Warrior King, famed for uniting Germany, though he seems to have spent half his adult life fighting against Popes in Italy. It’s funny thet the Holy Roman Emperor was excommunicated. His efforts helped to expand the Empire. It seems that almost a thousand years later that same sort of religious expansionism persists.
And Barbarossa just means Red Beard in Italian, so I’m guessing he was a ginger.
This current restaurant has two parts. There is a closed part where it appears families go to eat. Then there is the open part where I am seated, which has a sort of bench area open to the roadside so we can enjoy the traffic noise and fumes. At the start I was here alone, eating beef brisket. Then in came a couple who had an entire room to choose from but decided to sit at bench area as close to me as possible. WTF! Why decide to sit right on top of the only other person in the room?
The guy keeps trying to catch my eye as a way of getting into a conversation because he can see me writing in my journal. He’s a loudmouth who I have christened as King Cnut.
The beef brisket makes me think of Howard Wolowitz in the Big Bang Theory as it seemed to be a running joke when he mentioned his mother and beef brisket. I wondered if it was a Jewish thing and Google worked again.
Beef Brisket is an Eastern European Ashkenazi dish, where cheeap cuts of beef are braised on low heat for a long time in order to soften the meat. Apparently it’s best if cooked with carrots and onions and sweet tomatoes.
The beer here is called Summer Pale ale and it is the best flavour on the island so far. I could almost see myself in a beer garden in the English countryside, if it wasn’t for the incessant noise of the motorbikes and scooters. To make things even better it’s cheaper than a pint in England, even though it is more than double the price of a large Bintang.
Thinking of the local beer… I can imagine Spike Milligan singing,
Bintang! Bintang! Bintang! Bintang! Bintang idle I poh!
Good old Spike – one of my childhood heroes. When asked why he called his TV series Q1, Q2, Q3 etc he said he was looking forward to getting to Q8!
Spike always identified as Irish even though he was born in India while his father was serving there. On his gravestone it says in Gaelic
Duirt me go raibh me breoite
Which roughly translates as I told you I was ill.
Fairy Hanny 