Being in Germany for some years, I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I rarely pick German restaurants when eating out. Those rare occasions of eating in restaurants serving German cuisines were usually not my choice.

Not that I’m saying I don’t like German specialties nor I have anything against German food whatsoever, it’s just that I personally find German food sort of lacking in varieties. One thing I know for sure that really puts me off eating at German restaurants is because I’m not much of a meat-eater.

Whenever I happened to be dining at a German locale, I’ll usually end up ordering something without meat because I know I won’t be able to finish the portion of meat nor the amount of the food served. No wonder all my favorite German food are non-meat. You see, I don’t really like to end my dining experience with bad conscience for wasting food.

So the other day, I was dining at a well-known German restaurant cum brewery in Karlsruhe with some colleagues, I was flipping through their menu looking for something which doesn’t sound like too much a portion for me. I laughed out loud when I saw that they offered food in four different sizes.

Here’s a part of the menu from their website serving food in the size of S, M, L, and XXL. Oh, note that they skip XL and jump straight to XXL . One of the most prominent German specialty that you can find in almost every German restaurant is the Schnitzel or pork cutlet, usually served with French fries, something which I have never ordered in restaurants before but eaten many times cooked by T’s mom.

According to the definition on the menu:
Size S is suitable for children or elderly people.
Size M is suitable for those with small to normal hunger.
Size L is suitable for those with a large appetite with large hunger.
Size XXL is suitable for those with a HUGE hunger or for a few persons.

Sometimes I can’t really trust the explanation written on the menu because normal hunger to Germans would mean one and a half portion of food for me! So I would usually go for the smallest size here. The same applies to clothing for me too .

A friend of mine ordered an L-size pepper pork cutlet and my eyes almost popped out seeing the size of the plate. Now you see why I rarely dine at German restaurants .