Oktoberfest in Manila: Free-flowing food and beer

A little-known fact about Oktoberfest is that it typically starts in September. Of course, for most Filipinos, beer-drinking is year-round, and we hardly need any excuse to down our lagers and ales. We’ve naturally taken to the Bavarian tradition of Oktoberfest that the local German Club says it has been observed and celebrated in the Philippines for the last 76 years.

The 77th edition happened last weekend at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza Hotel, and just as in years past, and despite the threat of Typhoon Lando, organizers delivered on the promise of it being the most authentic way to celebrate Oktoberfest without actually booking a flight to Munich’s Theresienwiese and muscling your way through glassy-eyed beer drinkers from all over the world.

“We have about 2,000 attendees tonight, and about 2,000 last night,” Sofitel’s F&B manager Damien Marchenay told me over the din of traditional German music and nonstop chatter from revelers inside the hotel’s Harbor Garden Tent. It’s slightly more than last year’s numbers, proof that the annual bacchanalia is ever-growing.

At the launch event a few weeks ago, organizers revealed the scope of the celebrations with some eye-popping numbers: they were planning to serve 16,000 one-liter mugs of beer, 1,000 kilos of German sausages, 320 kilos of pork knuckles, 500 kilos of chicken, and 300 kilos of sauerkraut. Talk about a killer beer-and-pulutan combo.

If you’ve never been to an Oktoberfest celebration, let me paint you a picture: there are about 50 to 70 long wooden tables with wooden benches on either side spread out in Sofitel’s Harbor Garden Tent. Each can seat about 8 to 10 people.

Along every side of the space is a buffet spread of traditional Bavarian cuisine—we’re talking an insane amount of sausages, carving stations serving beef, chicken, pork and lamb, schnitzels and frkadellen (meat patties, like burgers), and an assortment of appetizing rolls and cheeses, soups, and desserts.

The beer of course, is served in gigantic dispensers endlessly refilled by waitstaff garbed in traditional Bavarian regalia: dirndls for the ladies and lederhosen for the men.

Your main job, of course, is to eat and drink, and perhaps socialize with the hundreds of other Oktoberfest-ers all around you. Onstage, a German band (this year it’s the Bavarian Sound Express) plays a mix of traditional Deutsch music and popular pop-rock music, encouraging the crowd to get up and start shaking their tailfeathers.

In between the sets, the hosts announce raffle winners, which this year included gadgets like Macbook Airs and a roundtrip ticket for two to any European destination courtesy of Lufthansa Airlines.

This year’s festivities weren’t unlike previous years, although I couldn’t help but notice a large Dutch contingent wearing dirndls and lederhosen in shocking orange.

One first-time partygoer said he found the event much more relaxed and cheerful than a similar Oktoberfest celebration he attended in Hong Kong. I’d chalk it up to the naturally easygoing and fun-loving nature of us Pinoys, but then, any gathering with music and good company would likely result in a generally enjoyable, convivial atmosphere. The free-flowing food and beer are a much-appreciated bonus. — BM, GMA News