What It’s Like for an American Expat to Watch “Das Perfekte Dinner” with His German Wife

Have you ever seen Das Perfekte Dinner? It’s a German reality TV show — stolen directly from its creators in the UK — in which 4 or 5 people take turns cooking and hosting dinners in their own homes, then rate one another on a point scale from 1 to 10. The person who scores the most total points wins €1,500 euros. My German wife loves this show and watches it almost every day. I used to watch it with her, until I realized I don’t give one dried piece of flying donkey shit about cooking.

Look, I’m from Portland, Oregon — a town full of foodies and hipsters of every flavor — so by all rights I should be all about this sort of culinary snobbery. I’m just not; to me, cooking is but a series of annoying gestures standing between me and the bacon cheeseburger which should already be crammed in my mouth. My wife, however, is a classy European lady. She has great taste in everything, from fashion to food, and absolutely zero tolerance for anything unrefined.

So as we were watching this one episode of Das Perfekte Dinner, she began mocking one of the contestant for having no idea what “seared ahi” was. (Forget the dish itself: this poor fool seemed not to know the difference between tuna fish and a can of spray paint.) My wife rolled her eyes like a stone cold aristocrat, saying:

“It is pearls for the pigs.”

*Translated directly from the German expression, “Perlen vor die Säue werfen.”

If you would like to read another classic Denglish post, check this one out: My German Wife Shops for American Baby Gifts