Horcher (restaurant)
Horcher | |
---|---|
28014 | |
Country | Spain |
Other information | Nearest station: Banco de España |
Website | Official website |
Horcher is a restaurant in Madrid, Spain. It moved to Madrid in 1943 having originally opened in Berlin, Germany, in 1904. It was a popular restaurant with the elite of Nazi Germany.[1]
History
In Berlin
During
In 1934
British double agent Duško Popov was told by his German case officer Johnny Jebsen that there were hidden microphones in the flower vases at Horcher's during a 1941 meal.[4]
Horcher's closed in Berlin following
The staff of Horcher's were exempt from conscription during World War II.[7] The first act of Carl Zuckmayer's 1946 play The Devil's General is set at Horcher's.[8]
Horcher opened a branch in London in March 1938. In her diary Blood and Banquets, Bella Fromm wrote that "Even before 1933, [Horcher's] was largely patronized by the Nazi leaders"[9]
In Madrid
Göring assisted with the moving of the restaurant to Madrid. The escape of senior Nazis from Europe in the aftermath of the war dubbed the
In his 1979 memoir, My Stomach Goes Traveling, the actor Walter Slezak wrote that Horcher's was "The best restaurant in Madrid...There food is regarded as a religion".[12] Notable patrons of Horcer's have included Salvador Dalí, Ernest Hemingway and Sophia Loren.[1]
In 2003 Fodor's guide to Madrid wrote of Horcher's that "Once Madrid's best restaurant, this classic at the edge of the Retiro is now widely considered little more than an overpriced reminder of its former glory".[13]
As of 2019 Horcher's was owned by a member of the fourth generation of the Horcher family, Elisabeth Horcher.[1] The historian Giles MacDonogh said of Horcher's that "There is no other restaurant in the history of the twentieth — or indeed any — century...that has relocated from one European capital to another without losing a jot of its social exclusivity".[1] In a 2018 interview with El Confidencial, Elisabeth Horcher referred to her grandparents as "survivors" who had "...had to live through a very convulsive time. They had to leave their country...My grandparents were not supporters of the regime".[1] Elisabeth Horcher's historical novel her family's story, Los Horcher, was published in 2018.[14]
In a 2019 article in The Washington Post the novelist Diana Spechler described Horcher's "revisionist history-chic decor" and an "open-arms policy [that] is as charming as it is discomfiting. Though restaurateurs aren't obligated to police their customers' decency, egalitarian treatment becomes ethically murky against politically perilous backdrops".
Cuisine
The novelist Diana Spechler ate at Horcher's with a companion for a 2019 article in
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Diana Spechler (17 December 2019). "For 115 years, one restaurant has fed the elite in Berlin and now Madrid. Nazis included". The Washington Post. Retrieved 20 March 2021.
- ^ Morton 2018, p. 252.
- ^ Petropoulos 2006, p. 208.
- ISBN 978-1-982143-86-2.
- ISBN 978-1-84904-352-6.
- ISBN 978-0-19-821940-8.
- ISBN 978-1-4464-9921-4.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-1045-3.
- ISBN 978-0-671-75139-5.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-86207-403-3.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-415-92546-4.
- ISBN 978-0-385-11302-1.
- ISBN 978-1-4000-1102-5.
- ISBN 978-84-9164-438-5.
- Morton, A. (2018). Wallis in Love: The Untold True Passion of the Duchess of Windsor (electronic ed.). New York: Hachette. ISBN 978-1-78243-723-9.
- Petropoulos, J. (2006). Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19979-607-6.
- Falkman, Carl: Spill inte på Göring! – gastronomisk gesällvandring i trettiotalets Europa. Wiken, 1981. ISBN 9170240310. Libris