As an innkeeper, Gunter Völker first managed field kitchens in the Balkans, then he opened restaurants in Kabul and Erbil. A conversation about warlords in the tavern – and what the German soldiers who will soon be stationed in Lithuania crave.
For 14 years Gunter Völker cooked as a rations group leader for the Bundeswehr – in field kitchens in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia, while war was raging in the Balkans all around. He then ran German restaurants in Kabul and in Erbil, Iraq.
A tavern has always been a neuralgic point for crises, mostly personal ones. But why do you become a landlord in international crisis areas? What can such a reveal about the eating habits of German soldiers, who are soon to be stationed abroad for the first time, in Lithuania?
The star reaches the people of Sri Lanka. There he runs “Captain Gunni’s”, a small wooden restaurant in Hikkaduwa. Völker is currently still fighting with the local authorities for a license to serve beer. He’s dazzling anyway. Völker is in a bright Hawaiian shirt and in the middle of the siesta.
Mr. Völker, an online review of your restaurant in Hikkaduwa says: “Anyone who has an appetite for German cuisine in Sri Lanka should definitely go to Gunni.” Who in Sri Lanka has an appetite for German cuisine?
Many many. Locals who have been abroad before. But also German tourists who have been here for a long time and are slowly getting tired of rice and curry. But we are also not a restaurant where you go every day, but a good alternative.
Doesn’t German food have a rather, well, modest reputation abroad?
This is again the typical German problem. Only in Germany does all this no longer apply. The Americans and the Asians are wild about the hearty Central European cuisine.