On their only day off during their third and final residency at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany, The Beatles ate Christmas dinner at the city’s British seaman’s mission.
The British Mariner’s Mission was run by Jim Hawke, and was situated at Johannisbollwerk 20. The Beatles went there often, for cheap food and drink and a warm place to stay, during the days in Hamburg when they weren’t performing.
They ate the Christmas lunch with another band The Dominoes. However, the food wasn’t what either group were expecting.
The minister attached to the Mission said, ‘Would anyone like to say grace?’ and George in his wonderful deadpan way said, ‘Yes, thank Christ for the soup.’ The minister said, ‘Any more of that and you’re all out.’ We ate steaks and we found out later that they were horse steaks. We’d eaten a horse for Christmas.
John Frankland, The Dominoes
The Cavern, Spencer Leigh
The Cavern, Spencer Leigh
Also on this day...
Want more? Visit the Beatles history section.
This was such an odd thing to see scrolling down the timeline.
Probably the weirdest entry in the Beatles history
With that experience it is understandable they are became vegetarians later on.
John was the only member of The Beatles to eat meat regularly and although he did have a macrobiotic diet at some point in the later years of his life, he never followed it strictly and so therefore, he never became a full-time vegetarian the way Paul, George and Ringo did.
Paul must not have been happy.
Paul wasn’t a vegetarian back then. That came 13 years later.
It’s funny you should say that, because I was thinking the same thing as well, and I’m sure that in later years, he would’ve cringed at the thought or memory of eating those horse steaks, considering that both he and Linda became vegetarians.
I don’t think that Linda would’ve been too pleased either, as she loved horses very much and considered them to be her favourite animal, as stated in an interview in the early 1990s at Albert Dock in Liverpool – here is a link to the interview.
Looks like that was 1962. Commonplace to eat horse in France and quite sure it was served to me on a visit in the early 1980’s.
In Germany, sauerbraten was a common dish, and originally made with horse meat. Things like that aren’t that taboo in other parts of the world. While in the service stationed in Korea, I saw dishes made out of dog meat, which was considered a delicacy by the older people then.