I am Hugh Neumann, the accidental restaurateur.
My parents, Maximilian and Berthe, both of Germanic descent, opened Platte—it means plate—when I was four and my sister Elise was seven. It was in the 1960s. Entrees were dense and diners smoked uninhibitedly through the meal. The menu—punctuated with Bavarian staples, since their heritage was from the southern region of Germany—emulated my parents: corpulent and humorless. After swallowing that last boiled potato and settling the tab, one had to resist the temptation to catnap on the moss green shag carpeting. The décor was equally oppressive, dark wood benches suggestive of barracks and just as daunting. An absence of music meant the austere soundtrack was cutlery clinking and determined mastication. This, Elise and I would someday inherit
