Fire! Fire! Fire!

The Nuremberg Toy Fair is a Big Deal for the industry I work in. It's held in the sprawling Messe complex outside the city, and it's the largest toy trade show in the world. I spent a week talking (and playing) with a variety of game designers and industry folks, having a generally wonderful time. However, on the last day of the fair, everyone pulls down their booth (well, not everyone–most people have already left by the weekend, leaving schlubs like us to pull things down) and heads for the non-Nuremberg hills. This left me alone to feed myself in Nuremberg. The FOOLS!

Sure, I'd been eating wonderful regional German food at Steichele and Landbierparadies. The German beer had been frequent and copious, and although I hadn't eaten at Hutt'n yet, I had been by to pick up my now-annual bottle of Weihnachtslikör. So, forgive me if I decided to go non-traditional for my last meal.

Take a walk northeast from the Weißer Turm U-Bahn stop up towards the river, and just before you would cross the bridge to travel over to the Trödelmarkt (a tiny little shopping area on an island in the middle of the Pegnitz), you take a left down a dark residential street for a couple of blocks, and you'll find yourself at the Kon Tiki.

"Dinner?" I was asked (apparently I always look American) as I walked in the door, and a quick nod later I had an apertif thrust into my hand as I'm being escorted to my table. An auspicious start, thinks I.

I get to the table, peruse the drinks menu (dinner can wait), and I notice at the bottom their "Kon Tiki Surprise." Now, I am a bit self-conscious about things that include the word "surprise" in their description. If I'm in a group, one can order anything in the spirit of group experimentation, but, say, ordering the Mai-Kai Mystery Drink by myself would make me feel just a bit pervy (and not in a good way), doubly so since EVERYBODY'S WATCHING. So, maybe the Kon Tiki surprise is a really good drink, maybe two Samoan linebackers are going to burst out of the kitchen and beat the crap out of me. Only one way to find out, I suppose...

So the server comes back in a couple of minutes. A small sigh of relief: no parade, no sombreros to be forced onto my head, just a large, insanely garnished drink with a couple of sparklers stuck into the enclosing pineapple.

"Heh - better put those sparklers out before I start drinking..." thinks I.

The server sets down the drink, smiles, pulls out a lighter, and then sets off a car flare in the middle of my drink. You think I'm kidding. BEHOLD. I now have a 3-foot jet of flame shooting out of my drink, dangerously close to a triple-strong pool of alcohol, and I'm in a small alcove and EVERYTHING I'M SURROUNDED WITH IS BAMBOO.

So, yeah, Cloverfield-like, when confronted with a life-threatening event, I immediately pull out my phone to take a picture. This way, when they pull my charred, bamboo-fused remains from the ashes of the restaurant, my final moments will be sitting in the iCloud in order for my wife to print out and place in a frame on my coffin. (Most likely, with the caption "See what I had to deal with?")

This was the highlight of the experience, but only by a narrow margin, as the next thing to hit the table was my appetizer. Now, I've had pu pu platters, where I get to take my skewer of beef and add a little char at the table; I've had sizzling stone appetizers, where I get to place my paper-thin slices of meat on a hot rock and grill them. What I've not done in the past is cook raw meat over Sterno. Not that namby-pamby Sterno can that gets served inside a metal can on a wire rack underneath a hot place with a spoon to remove your food with–here, I get a bunch of raw flesh on skewers (completely murdering a pineapple just to have something to stick the skewers into), and a CUP of Sterno, alight in a coffee mug that's been wrapped in aluminum foil. I. Have. Proof.

I'd like to say that I have a recipe here, or at least a moral of some kind, but I don't. I enjoyed my dinner, the Surprise drink threw me under a bus more than one drink has in some time, and I got back to my hotel contented and char-free. Whether their trust in their guests is misplaced is debatable, although they've been open for 35 years without too much of a body count (presumably). I do know that the Ann Arbor fire marshall prevented a restaurant from serving s'mores with a Sterno can sealed inside a large iron centerpiece, so one can imagine the conniption our marshall would experience if presented with either of the above experiences. In any event, this record simply stands as homage to a nice evening out in Nuremberg. And next year, when I go back for dinner, you'll have this for my shrine at the funeral home if I don't get my pictures taken fast enough.