“I’m someone who likes to do things differently”: This applies not only to Günther’s colorful shirts, but also to the furnishing of his idiosyncratic house and the handling of a Bavarian roast pork. But at the finale of “Das Perfect Dinner” (VOX) in Augsburg, things get really tight for “Günni”.
Friday, July 8th: “For me, the vision comes from within, and then I simply implement it”: Welcome to the ultimate “Günni” show, the highlight of the “Perfect Dinner” round in Augsburg. After the four “girls” (Günni) convinced with style and sophistication, Günther (56) relies on radical individuality. The huge house of the master painter and varnisher, in terms of decoration located somewhere between a country house, ghost train, terracotta wiping technique and “The Geissens”, is the setting for his motto: “I have the courage to be independent in every respect.” His menu has both regional as well as spiritual components:
Motto: “A treat for the soul in Bavarian”
And because he likes to draw from the full, Günni doesn’t skimp on color or jovial sayings: “If something goes wrong for me, I’ll only change the path, but never myself.” As colorful as the koi carp in his pond are his dizzyingly patterned shirts. “Some call me crazy or insane,” explains Günni about his image. But who is surprised with a childhood with 13 (!) siblings that every means is right to somehow stand out?
In any case, the “girls” promise themselves a fun evening. “Günther – that’s anything but an understatement,” predicts Dani (41). “It won’t be ‘The Perfect Dinner’, but ‘The Perfect Impro’,” Babsi (36) is certain. As Günni’s humorous sidekick, she becomes his right-hand man that evening – and simply takes over the task of preparing drinks and service.
“I’ll just help you now,” she decides, considering Günni’s slow pace and the hunger of the others. But why rush when a roast pork has to marinate for several hours in a stock of red wine, beer, herbs, vegetables and honey? In any case, with his reading glasses loosely tucked into his fine hair, Günther remains unshakable: “When things are going well, they’re going well. Everything great.”
“I give Günni 0 points,” was Babsi’s joking motto a few days ago. However, as the dinner progressed, things got serious. According to the critical farmer’s daughter, the crust of the roast pork is “either burnt or too soft”, the meat is too dry, the decoration with a bunch of herbs pricked into an apple is too … colourful.
The dessert, however, promises salvation: the “golden” curd cheese dumplings give a “great mouthfeel”, according to Alina (35). Under Günther’s protest (“The beautiful blueberry mirror!”), Babsi and Dani order cinnamon and sugar, and then the No. 1 of their round is certain: Dani wins with 37 points. Meanwhile, Günther brings up the honorable tail with 23 points. Could have been worse. But luckily Babsi puts the zero card away again and gets five mercy points in the second attempt. The conclusion remains with Babsi: “Geile Grubbe, great week.”
Thursday, July 7th: I just have too much energy that has to go somewhere,” says Dani (41) about herself. Her apparently tireless drive is not only reflected in an ambitious menu composition (“All my favorite dishes”):
Motto: „Favourites“
Her house and the understated “garden” stretching out to the horizon are showpieces. In addition, the sporty, smart, world-travelled 41-year-old has a husband, three daughters between the ages of three and eleven and a job as a language teacher.
After two rounds of “The Perfect Dinner” in rather moderate apartments, a (supposedly) “perfect life” is showing up again in Lützelburg near Augsburg – because Dani is also a riding therapist, an enthusiastic participant in yodelling and didgeridoo courses, super fit and really nice. It doesn’t matter that she pronounces “bruschetta” with ‘sch’ and calls Alina’s (35) nested Russian wooden dolls “Kalinkas” – the hobby artist, who has hung her own paintings all over the house, according to her husband, ” bumblebees in the butt”.
In the evening, these first unfold in the form of a creamy Parmesan soup with homemade pesto ricotta ravioli. Only one thing disturbs the flight of the bumblebee: the never-ending jokes of “Hahn im Korb” Günther (56). Not everything about which the other ladies regularly shake with laughter is immediately understandable for those uninitiated to the Bavarian-Swabian dialect.
Just this much: Günther is sometimes late (“The best guests come last”), doesn’t like chocolate (“too sweet”), can cluck like a rooster and means his sayings as therapy: “Laughter is medicine for the soul.” The group gets a spoonful of that too much: “I would have liked to have concentrated on the starter, but that wasn’t possible – too much fun,” admits Babsi.
Dani’s main course with braised roast beef and al dente risotto (“I don’t like it so sloppy”) proves to be soothing for the eyes and palate. It is “a bit too hard” for the mischievous permanent critic Babsi, only Günther (“It tastes very good”) and chick Theresa (24), who has never tried tart or risotto, are enthusiastic and not only give 10 because of the brilliant dessert Points. Because Alina and Babsi are also not stingy with high ratings, Dani, who is also quite perfect that evening, goes into the final with 37 points as currently the highest placed.
Wednesday, July 6th: Alina (35) has her roots in Ukraine. Her hometown Kharkiv is currently writing depressing headlines, but “The Perfect Dinner” leaves the war outside. Alina, who came to Germany with her family at the age of twelve, leaves it with sweet memories: “They had the best ice cream in the world there, only with natural ingredients.” After much research, she serves her guests a similar dessert made from condensed milk, cream and Vanilla.
As a devout Jew, she also feels connected to Israel, represented on the menu by lamb chops with oranges and ginger and crispy aubergines. The social worker, who is as sensitive as she is practical, lends a firm hand: “My juice press broke earlier”. The orange juice flows out of the clenched fist, and the early riser (she’s been on her feet since 5 a.m.) also gets a few splashes of hot fat.
This does not detract from the spectacularly arranged menu of the hobby food blogger:
Motto: „Cook.Eat.Love“
While Alina nibbles on the pickled salmon in her relatively small kitchen (“I love it!”) and then gives it amazing shades of pink with the help of beetroot, Günther (56) is responsible for the fun at the table. On the first evening at Babsi (36) he sang about the “pure joy of life” (“No one can take one from me…”), he now lets the ladies, who are also in a good mood, celebrate him as “the cock in the basket”. “The world has to watch you cackle,” Babsi snorts, and “Günni” does as he is told.
But then the fluffing gives way to sheer reverence for Alina’s grandiose presentations. On the starter, wafer-thin slices of salmon and cucumber ripple alongside edible flowers, and the dessert, which features pavlova meringue and mascarpone cream, is a red-and-white dream. Only the main course does not really go down well.
“Lamb can ruin a lot,” commented Babsi in advance of the choice of meat. “It had fat on it,” complains Dani (41), “and the sauce was pretty sweet.” However, Alina is stoic about her decision: “You only regret things that you didn’t do, not those that happened.” Only Günther revels without reservation: “It tasted so good.” There are 10 points from him and another 25 from the rest of the round: This puts Alina next to Babsi at the top.
Tuesday, July 5th: When teacher Theresa shows a similar presence in her kindergarten as at the table of her “The Perfect Dinner” evening, this crèche is a Tobe paradise. The 24-year-old just uttered a soft “Oh, Luna…” when her cat decided to jump – in the middle of the table decoration with rather fragile wine glasses.
The guests Babsi (36), Alina (35) and Dani (41) show presence of mind and lift the gourmet tiger from the place setting. There is still an audible frown, especially from the dapper Dani: “Cat on the table, that’s impossible!” Luna’s journey of discovery leads directly into her designer handbag – for Dani that’s almost worse than the strawberry tiramisu that “doesn’t fit the Bavarian menu theme at all”.
Motto: „Ebbes guads“
What “Luna” was able to observe from her scratching post placed directly on the table, right up to her courageous attack on dessert and ceramic decorative deer, is a Theresa who is quite upset behind her stoic facade. As the youngest in the Augsburg group, she demonstrates amazing expertise in local tradition when choosing dishes. The components include roast pork, homemade dumplings and potato noodles, as well as a dessert with the sponge cake “Wibele”.
However, this does not want to be layered with the cream as planned. “Mom, what do I do with the gaps?” Theresa phoned the woman who knew everything: “It smears on the edges of the glass.” “It’s the same for me,” reassures her mother, as she already does made when Theresa moved out of her parents’ house. “Then she told me that it’s not a bad thing to leave the laundry for a week,” says the daughter, who is very ambitious in these matters.
The fact that she is “more of a chaos person” can only be noticed on this evening from the occasional nervous flickering of her eyes. Otherwise, she confidently cooks and serves a potato-carrot-ginger soup with a homemade baguette, serves amazing things like a wheat beer mojito, but also has to accept criticism: “The soup had the character of baby porridge,” Dani complains, and Günther (56) adds: ” I shoveled them out of the plate, not spooned them.”
“The fat has dissolved in the sauce, which should have thickened,” notes Babsi, but not without an addition: “At 24 I would not have been that far with cooking.” The result: 28 points and currently second place with a clear deficit behind Babsi for Theresa Only cat Luna is not considered in the award.
Monday, July 4th: Tidy, neat and more than relaxed when it comes to dialect: in Augsburg’s idyllic old town corners, five model representatives (and one man) of the small Bavarian-Swabian metropolis meet for a promisingly diverse “The Perfect Dinner” round. But the very first run is an outlier: Babsi, founder of a company for traditional shirts, invites you to the almost 3,000-inhabitant community of Wehringen.
In the middle of the field, the daughter of a farming family has built a spacious property with a roof terrace: “Everyone wanted to talk me out of it,” says the 36-year-old: “A woman who builds a house on her own – that’s not possible.” Her huge, modern kitchen alone (“I painted it on the carpenter and told me that’s how I want it”) is living proof of the opposite – or rather, the cool-minimalist, almost bare furnishings, rather meager proof
“I love concrete,” says Babsi, who also acknowledges that she has a rather cool disposition: “I don’t warm up to other people that easily.” So she prefers to heat it up in the direction of the stove (or gas induction stove, steamer plus platter) and an extremely labour-intensive menu with three components per course: “I always aim a little too high.”
Motto: “Three of three”
Babsi learned her drive from constant challenges in her childhood: “Ever since I was eleven, I had to help out on our farm.” In the meantime, she has refined her participation in the parental pig farm, the corresponding farm shop and “roasting schnitzel for 30 employees”.
The short version: Various starters and for the main course beef with port wine jus, pork fillet from the family business and veal escalope involtini with green asparagus and potatoes with a sea salt crust. To top it off, Kaiserschmarrn with apple sauce and homemade walnut and pistachio parfait. All of this puts Babsi under stress at times – so she has to dig up the potatoes from the thick layer of salt because she forgot the bay leaf for each tuber. But she just laughs it off: “Everything’s going well.” How does she find her own menu? “Great,” she judges every time you taste it, and finally: “Perfect.”
Your guests are also satisfied: “Mighty, but very tasty,” is how sports cannon Dani (41) evaluates the culinary delights. “Very aesthetic”, painter and house painter Günther (56) lets his expertise speak (“I am a very pictorial person”). “I just enjoy being silent,” explains teacher Theresa (24). Only social pedagogue Alina (35) comments on dessert: “I would have liked more lightness.” For the warm-up with Babsi, who is no longer so cool, 35 points – and at the cooking appointment with “FOX” (Günther) the shiny chrome-slate gray bar is hanging already way up.
You can read more about “The Perfect Dinner” on the following pages.
*The contribution “companion Babsi is disappointed: “I give Günni 0 points”” is published by Teleschau. Contact the person responsible here.