Thursday, May 29, 2014

Adolf's Meat & Sausage Kitchen

Hartford, Connecticut

2 comments:

Markus said...

Carl, this is certainly a name for a restaurant you wouldn't find that easily in Germany, despite being 'Adolf' such a German name.

Because of it being Hitler's first name, only right-wing extremists would ever use 'Adolf' as a public name. And the connotation with meat and sausage of course stirs up associations with all the murder and manslaughter that was done in Adolf Hitler's name.

So I am really curious if in the case of that Hartford eating place it is just the normal use of that German first name - as in the U.S. nobody sees a political connotation.

Carl Weese said...

Markus, I was amazed to see this. My first thought was, "couldn't they use the family name, instead?" The meat and sausage thing makes it over the top, and not because I'm personally vegetarian. I can't imagine anyone not finding this strange unless they grew up with it as a fixture of the neighborhood.

One thought is that it could be a very old business, established at this location before WWII. The name implies this—Americans of German/Austrian heritage are a large minority (50% years ago, likely less now) but in my years of school and decades since I've never met anyone named Adolf. Can't think of a public figure with the name, either.