Hard times for anyone in hospitality these days.

Germany’s currently back in a mild version of lockdown for the month in an effort to get daily infection rates down from their current level of >20k – restaurants and cafés can only do takeaways, bars and clubs are closed, no domestic tourism.

My friend Paul Bonna of Kaffeekommune fame hasn’t had customers inside his café since March – not enough room even to swing a cat and the 10m²/person requirement runs out of space just by having staff in there.

We’re were all quite happy to sit outside on his sidewalk tables and he’d just invested serious folding stuff in a marquee to keep us protected from the elements.

So he’s had to close up for the month.

Enter Pankratiushof, a high end sourdough bakery/delicatessen/farmshop/ restaurant in a local village-suburb.

They sell Paul’s coffee beans, he sells their croissants and bread on a Saturday.

Also.

Enter N’Eis, the sublime icecream company which started off in the Neustadt [“New Town” – 150 years around here is “new”..] and has expanded to a number of locations throughout Mainz.

Including the erstwhile guardhouse of Fort Malakoff, part of the 1840s Prussian fortifications along the Rhine.

They’ve closed down for the winter – your icecream won’t melt and dribble down your arm, but you’re at serious risk of getting frostbite of the lips – and someone came up with idea of using the building as a pop-up bakery and café until things get back to normal.

Thursday through Sunday, 9:00 through 16:00 or until they’re sold out.

This was the queue on their first day at around 11:00.

The one in front of us.

The one behind us was of equal length.

At a rough guess, they’ll be closing at about lunchtime….

20 Nov This entry was published on 20 November, 2020 at 13:55 and is filed under Mainz. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.