Of the great breads - focaccia, naan, bialy, pao de queijo - there's none I hold in higher esteem than the lowly pretzel. For years people had raved to me about Munich, but no one had mentioned the fact that the bread baskets in restaurants always include a brezel or two. I had heard about Swiss chocolate of course, but the pretzel roll sandwiches - first encountered at the Lausanne train station - were the real revelation.
Yesterday, after a hard day at Seatrade in Miami Beach, I strolled Lincoln Road. At the east end I saw a new place - SwissMaker - which displayed various types of large pretzels in its front window. Walking inside, I entered a pretzel emporium. (The place, I was told, has been open three months.)
The glass case on the left side of the restaurant bulged with looped and then straightened out doughiness. Starting in the back, I passed the basic hot dog brezel, a "super brezel baguette" (a kind of Bavarian hoagie), cheeseburger brezels, roast beef brezels, egg salad brezels, gourmet chedder cheese brezels, prosciutto-ham brezels, the "classic garlic butter brezel," the "gourmet Swiss-cheese brezel," the "premium smoked salmon brezel," and the "premium tuna salad brezel."
Closer to the front, for purists who don't like their pretzels serving as sandwiches, there were classic butter brezels, poppy seed brezels, caraway seed brezels, sunflower seed brezels, pumpkin seed brezels, salt brezels, sesame brezels, "original pizza-topped brezels," and the "original spicy Orient brezel."
A twisted cheer for globalization.
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