Pan-Asian and Hotel Vibes

Modern Art of Asia (MAOA) - Mitte

Last week I had the misfortune of landing in the wasteland otherwise known as Potsdamer Platz around dinner time. Don’t get me wrong – the place has a few redeeming features, like the Philharmonie, the Stabi, the film museum and the fact it’s never empty. And yet, finding something decent to eat over there appears to be a super-human ordeal. 

But we were hungry and the weather did not leave room for flexibility on the subject of location. So we were pretty much stuck where we were. Glossing over the dismal choice of restaurants available around the square that gave the world the traffic light, I could only shrug and grunt an undecipherable complaint about the desertification of central Berlin. With a choice of overpriced and sterile-looking venues, Potsdamer Platz really does feel like an urban desert with a few bright lights and never-ending loads of tourists.

We ended up marching into Modern Art of Asia, one of the sterile-looking restaurants on Leipziger Platz. The pan-Asian restaurant is always crammed pack with people and getting a table is not easy, which was – at lest – reassuring. The interior reminded me of the hotel aesthetics in Lost in Translation, the 90’s version: bright lights, long tables, basic colours. The concept reminded me of another concept that seems to have been left to rot somewhere in the 90’s: Mongolian buffets.

You must remember the loud rise and silent fall of Mongolian buffets. They were everywhere in the late 90’s: the concept was assembling a dish from scratch using available ingredients, as an able looking chef then took over one’s creation and turned it into a work of fine showmanship on a scary looking grill. The same applies here. The menu is fairly basic, with a few starters and horribly overpriced drinks. The main course, however, is the buffet, available as a stuff-your-plate-full-for-one-serving for 16.90 € or as a recurring extravaganza for 23.70 €. We decided to go for the buffet and ignore the rest.

Every serving consists of stuffing a bowl full of whatever ingredients one chooses to eat, selecting a marinade from a list of different options and handing that opus-magnum to the exhausted chefs slaving at the grill (unfortunately, MAOA offers no spectacular show of knife throwing at your food). The available ingredients start with basic things like onions and different sorts of vegetables (bell peppers, carrots, courgettes, etc.), move over to spices like chillies, coriander or dried fruit and end with a copious amount of meat and seafood. The meat selection is actually the best thing about the buffet, as it offers just about anything from duck through beef to kangaroo. The other ingredients, however, are not as exciting with vegetables and spices remaining very German (between broccoli and champignons). 

What a bowl looks like

The meat section

And yet, the main feature of the buffet is that je-ne-sais-quoi DIY experience. It’s fun to assemble things and come up with the most ludicrous combinations. The marinades (from blackberry-sake to fennel-garlic) are also pretty pleasing in most cases. They are fairly mellow and offer a diluted, Germanised sensation, but this should come as no surprise at a pan-Asian restaurant that looks like a hotel lobby. Which brings me to the bottom line: If you happen to be around Potsdamer Platz, have enough money to spend and feel like stuffing your face like a pig, be my guest, it’s fun. However, do not expect any refined experience of superior taste.

Overall Mark:

Modern Art of Asia
Leipziger Platz 8, 10117 Berlin
http://www.maoa.de

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Berlin's Only Curry? A Birthday Post

Sigiriya - Friedrichshain

It’s that time of year all over again. It’s cold and damp. People seem to enjoy being rude and grumpy. Leaving work in the dark, sunlight belongs to a distant memory of the past. Oh, the gloom. And yet, the Footprints are in a celebratory mode. Yes, you heard me; you are now reading blog’s 40th post, which also marks a whole year of incessant cyber-ranting about Berlin’s culinary landscape! Yay.

It did not take too much brooding to reach the conclusion that the most appropriate birthday gift to readers would be a recommendation about real curry in Berlin.

Just to recap – curry in Berlin is a problem. Always has been. I just blame it on the German psyche, which seems to be inherently incompatible with spicy food. Or with anything all too different from home. You are bound to see where this ends: sweet Vindaloos, creamy Daals, Gouda sprinkled over Naans. In other words: curry genocide. Let’s not exaggerate. Worse things have happened in history than expats unable to appease their ever growing hunger for curry. My stomach rarely stays empty (there is enough non-curry food around, as numerous posts here must have proved beyond doubt). I have not yet starved, a blank expression over my face and flies hovering over my head in a street corner somewhere in Marzahn. And yet, curry deprivation is psychologically taxing and should not be taken lightly. Oh, the gloom.

Yet no more! I come bearing the gift of the first edible curry in Berlin. But let’s not rush things. One step at a time.

It all started with Sarah’s (who knows her curries) discovery of the Sri Lankan Sigiriya in Friedrichshain. I’ll be frank about it: I found it hard to believe her at first. Add the fact that we were talking about an Indian-style restaurant in the heart of Friedrichshain’s Südkiez, which – for the sake of all fairness – did not help dispel any fears or misconceptions in advance. But it’s hard to doubt a Bradfordian’s judgement about curry. Every possibly edible curry is worth a shot. So there I went.

The menu’s layout, the overall ambiance and the insistence on putting organic symbols all around the place reminded me of Chandra Kumari on Gneisenaustraße (which had left me lukewarm at best). I should also add that I am less keen on Sri Lankan/Southern Indian food, as I grew up feeding on Pakistani/Northern Indian deliciousness. But we are in Berlin. We shall not be picky. Or anal. Or stupid. Beggars can’t be choosers. It was time to meet my maker.

We began with the three starters on the menu: Roles (vegetarian roles with a potato-based filling, 2.50 €), vadai (chick-pea balls served with sweet-sour sauce, 2.70 €) and the elavalu roti (samosa-like coconut-bread dumplings with vegetarian filling, 2.80 €). I’ll have to admit they were not breathtakingly spectacular. Far from it, actually. The roles were nice – the filling was a nicely seasoned, stodgy samosa-like-filling and the dough was thin and light. The vadai was... well... dry. The chick-pea balls were nicely seasoned, but it felt like biting into a piece of dry cardboard. The elavalu was, however, very pleasing. It was perfectly seasoned; the dough was good with just the right touch of coconut. They were quite alright, but not much more. As such, I was still dubious about the next phase.

Elavalu roti

Vadai

We then ordered five dishes: Niviti dhal hodhi (vegetarian red lentil curry with spinach, 6.30 €), chicken curry with paripoo hodhi (a dish with both a chicken based curry dish and a daal – red lentil curry – for 8.90 €), chicken curry with wamboutou hodhi (a chicken curry dish with another aubergine curry, 8.90 €), mutton saag (mutton curry in spinach served with an extra raita-bread, 8.90 €) and mutton curry with ratu ale hodhi and sini sambole (a dish of mutton curry, beetroot – coconut curry and caramelised onions, 9.50 €). The first three we ordered “originalscharf” – which is trying to say we wanted it really spicy, and the latter two were ordered “German-spicy”. Which means not spicy at all, which kinda misses the point, but oh well. In addition, we ordered two pol-rotis (delicious coconut bread, 1.50 €).

The good news is that everything was good. Unlike curries I’ve so far encountered in Berlin, Sigiriya actually uses real spices and not just pieces of “things” swimming in a tasteless, generic curry batches made of blandness and cream. It’s all nicely refined. The bad news is that it’s not Pakistani. I am not sure I am the biggest fan of coconut-based dishes, and Sri Lankan food is big on coconut. But then again, this is my problem, not Sigiriya’s.

Chicken and daal

Mutton and beetroot

I’ll start with the daals, because we all know daal really is the ultimate test. Both daals were good: rich dishes with a real palette of tastes. I found them a tad too coconutty, but then again, this is only me talking. They had enough spice to have more presence than anything else I’ve found in Berlin, but I did not think they were spicy enough. The daal with the spinach was a tiny bit better than the pure daal. The aubergine curry was perfect. Again, too coconutty for me, but otherwise rich in taste, spicy and quite wonderful. The chicken curries were good as well, with the chicken and the spices taking centre stage together (so different to any chicken-curry you’d order anywhere else in town, where you just get a bland sauce with tasteless pieces of chicken lurking around in it). If only, the sauce was not powerful enough, but it was all in the right direction. The mutton dishes were not bad either. The saag was nicely refined, but I found it lacked a bit of presence. The raita was perfect, however, and compensated for the relative blandness of the dish. The second mutton was a lot better. The beetroot curry was very pleasing and the spicy caramelised onions were quite fantastic: both had just the right presence, well balanced and well spiced. The mutton curry on the same dish was a bit more disappointing. Not spicy enough and tasted a bit more generic than the rest. But still light years away from anything else around.

Bottom line: Go to Sigiriya. Like... you know, NOW. Compared to curries in Birmingham it might still be lacking in more than one way, but it could still be a fairly good choice on a London scale. On a Berlin scale, which is what we are dealing with a the moment – it may just be the only possible choice.

Overall Mark: 

Restaurant Sigiriya
Grünberger Straße 66, 10245
www.restaurant-sigiriya.de


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Korean Hipster Bashing

Kimchi Princess - Kreuzberg

I have promised myself not to start another entry with a new report about the weather. Another weather rant would set the seal on my creative ambitions, as it would – justifiably – appear as if I had nothing else to write about. I mean, I would not like to convey the impression my life had no more substance than discussing the weather and watching Downton Abbey (a fine neo-Victorian combination if there ever was one).

And thus heavy hearted I realised I had no choice but to opt for the second least original activity after talking about the weather (and procrastinating with Downton Abbey): hipster bashing.

I usually try to keep hipster bashing to myself. First of all because everyone else around me (especially Two Broke Girls) does it so much more eloquently than I ever will. Secondly it’s because deep inside I really am a failed would-be hipster. And yes, I’ve finally said it: I see all these young people with a trust fund somewhere in their pantry and coolness smeared all over their collars and I get green with envy. Literally. My insides turn with nausea that is not so much hatred as it is pure jealousy. As we all know, the aspiring kind is usually worse than the real thing.

The obstacles preventing my metamorphosis into a real hipster are manifold. First, I don’t have the right parents. Meaning – no trust fund to speak of. The only trust my parents ever bestowed on me was a grave talk about the lack thereof as I had taken (my parents used the word “stolen”) my mother’s only ring and given it to a friend back in year one. The second reason for my acceptance of being nothing more than an aspiring cool person for the rest of my life would have to be my aversion of stupid hats and neon colours (beside the fact my hair gets too rebelliously curly when I try coaching it into an asymmetric hipster-do). It’s not that I haven’t tried. I once even walked through Dalston wearing skinny neon-coloured trousers, thick rimmed clear-glasses and a stupid hat with a butterfly on top, but I think it was too obvious I had the wrong hair beneath my hat and that I felt like a court jester in what I was wearing. Not owning your look is probably the biggest deal breaker on the hipster credibility (a.k.a. coolness) scale.

For a long time being spießig in Berlin had been my refuge. I had been inherently cool by proxy of being an expat in Berlin and inherently free of hipsters because I usually went for good food. This week’s visit to Kimchi Princess in Kreuzberg taught me that the times, they are a-changing.

So Kimchi Princess, right? I’ve known the place for a while. It was the first credible Korean restaurant in Berlin. It is also – like – designed and stuff. A large space divided into a main space and second floor amidst post-industrial wannabe beams and construction elements. Dimmed lights, nice accessories, the lots. Not only is it all beautifully executed, but they even have a cooler-than-thou club facing Skalitzer Straße. And needless to say, the place is packed. Has been for a while, but this time I was just overwhelmed by the amount of strange neon-coloured hats that greeted me as I had set foot past the threshold. Fortunately enough though, as I had not reserved a table we had to be seated in the crouching corner away from the coolness (where you sit Japanese-style on a higher platform and crouch over a low stool). This way I was actually able to concentrate on the menu.

The menu at Kimchi Princess has always been quite blissfully manageable. It contains a few starter classics, the usual Korean grills (starting with 16 € per person) and a few Korean classics. We did not try any of the grills, but rather chose to concentrate on the more affordable parts of the menu (knowing that the real Korean test is the holy trinity of the pancake, kimchi and bibimbap).

Kimchi Pajeon

Bibimbap (not yet mixed)

The starters were the mul mandu (steamed meat dumplings, 4.50 €) and kimchi pajeon (kimchi pancakes, 6.70 €). It was an OK start. The portions were large, the presentation pleasing and the overall quality was high. The dumplings were fairly well executed – just the right texture and moisture, the right size and all. The seasoning was fine as well, but lacked something in order to be perfect. Alright really. The pancakes were good. The Korean softness was there and the entire thing was a fine experience. No complaints. Other than the fact that the kimchi pancakes are supposed to be heavenly (no exaggeration here. My short life has introduced me to a fair amount of kimchi pancakes that made me want to re-enact the entire orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally and to mean every bit of it). Those were just nice. They tasted too much like pizza and too little like kimchi.

And so we continued to the main courses: the haemul udong (a spicy noodle soup with seafood and tofu, 10.50 €) and the unavoidably classic bibimbap (a hot pot with rice, beef, vegetables, egg and spicy deliciousness that you get to mix up and enjoy, 10.50 €, also available for 9.50 € in the vegetarian variety). They were both served alongside an impressive selection of sides (these change every time. The only obligatory one is – of course – kimchi. That wonderful, stinky Korean cabbage which really is what Korean heaven is made of. This time it was accompanied by bean-sprouts, anchovies, green beans and green cabbage, all marinated in something rather pleasing).

Udong

Kimchi

The soup was alright. The noodles were delicious, one could argue about the amount and quality of the seafood used, but the general size of the dish was impressive and the general taste very agreeable. The best thing about it was that broth managed to be pleasingly spicy and have a strong presence all at the same time. The bibimbap, however, was more than just alright. It was really good. And that’s an improvement. I know I’m supposed to base my reviews on that one evening only, but the reason I had not set foot at Kimchi Princess for a while before that evening was because their bibimbaps had been just alright whereas Madang and Ixthys offered superior choices. Well, no more, or partly so. The ones at Madang or Ixthys are still better, but this week’s bibimbap at Kimchi Princess was A LOT better than what it used to be like. The meat was just right, the overall size, taste and abundance of the other vegetables as well as the taste and availability of the spicy red bean paste were very good as well. At last, I managed to actually enjoy a bibimbap at Kimchi Princess without too many ifs and buts. And now to the sides, not any less important here. They were actually all very good. The kimchi, the most important one, was also another sign of improvement – I used to find the kimchi at Kimchi Princess fairly bland. It still isn’t the best in town, but the cabbage had just the right consistency and age, the seasoning was good as well. Definitely enjoyable.

At the end of the day – Kimchi Princess is a good address. Good Korean food in a very pleasing setting. There may be cheaper and better quality Korean restaurants in Berlin. However, what Kimchi Princess lacks in pure food quality, it compensates with the accessories: service, ambiance, presentation and oh yes, how could I ever forget – coolness.

Overall Mark: 

Kimchi Princess
Skalitzer Straße 36, 10999 Berlin
www.kimchiprincess.com


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Haunted Addresses: Vietnamese à la Central Europe

Chez Dang - Kreuzkölln

Returning to Berlin after a long holiday always involves a moment of reconciliation with the local greyness. Even after all these years, I still find the vast empty spaces, the dimly lit streets and the general scruffiness surprisingly daunting, if only for a short moment. Then there is the second post-holiday impression I have to cope with. It usually relates to a new venue that as a sign of sheer rudeness decided to open its doors in my short absence. There is always some element of visible change inherent to the city, even with holidays that do not exceed three weeks.

It’s not like you haven’t heard it all before. Berlin is all about change and many areas have transformed senselessly, entirely reinventing themselves in the last few decades, with Neukölln being the latest of a long list. We all know the main stories – Prenzlauer Berg transformed from a run-down-post-socialist-ruin into yummy-mummy-paradise or Kreuzkölln exchanging its old rugged Berliners for international wannabe hipsters. Yet these are made of a fair number of smaller stories. Some of them are clear success stories of venues establishing themselves as clear institutions. Some just get by. Whereas a tiny few just seem to be cursed.

I don’t know whether Friedelstr. 31 is an example for such unlucky address, but truth be told – it has already seen three different venues come and go in the last few years. True, the first restaurant was a success story, it was the pan-Mediterranean Kantina von Hugo, which after a few years decided to expand and move to a better address in Kreuzberg just on the other side of the canal. It was then replaced by Hellgrewe, which was ludicrously expensive for local standards and failed to establish itself as Neukölln’s new rising posh star. In fact, it did not as much as survive a year on the ground before it had to fade away to restaurant heaven and make way for Chez Dang.

And so we decided it was about time to pay our tribute to Neukölln’s latest newbie. Chez Dang would be the second Vietnamese restaurant on the street (with the relatively canonised institution Jimmy Woo being the usual alternative at no. 24), so it needed to find an identity of its own. Strangely enough, even though three inherently different restaurants have occupied the same spaces, the general atmosphere has not changed much since the Kantina’s first heyday: The restaurant is composed of a single, large and white space with dark wooden tables, agreeably dim lights and a mildly posh (and mildly sterile) feeling to it. The space has an inevitable Central-European vibe to it, which is not what you’d expect of a Vietnamese restaurant. Chez Dang seems to embrace and own that feeling, which is always a nice thing. I can only approve of any place that makes an effort to confront old clichés.

Chez Dang’s menu goes along the same line. Even though the dishes are clearly of the classically Vietnamese variety, the menu’s structure felt “Westernised”, if not plainly Germanised: A selection of random starters followed by a random selection of fairly balanced main courses, albeit with an endearing twist, allowing dishes with names like “pig fought tiger and lost” to take the centre stage. The pricing was very humane with most main courses around 6.50 € and the service earned rare points for professionalism and niceness.

Tempura Temptations

Lucky Bags

Which brings us to the actual food. We started with the “lucky bags” (fried wan tans with chicken filling, 4.50 €), “tempura temptations” (vegetable tempura, 5.50 €, also available in the shrimpy version for 6.50 €) and the “coconut thrill” (coconut-milk based soup with chunks of chicken for 3.60 €). The bags were mainly fried. They weren’t “bad”, but were too bland to be “good” either. The vegetarian tempura was a bit more amusing with different kinds of vegetables from aubergines to broccoli involved in the endeavour, but hey, it wasn’t too exciting either. Both fried dishes came with a sweet-and-sour-sauce that appeared directly out of my 80’s childhood. The soup, however, was a lot more pleasing. It was no revelation, but it delivered fairly well on the taste front: it was nicely spicy, thick without being ridiculously coconuty and its pricing was fairly perfect.

Pho

Bamboo Me Baby

The main courses continued along the same lines. We ordered the pho (the one true Vietnamese must-have, which is just clear broth with stuff in it, it was available with different sorts of meat, but the waitress recommended the beef, so beef it was. 6.70 €) and two more dishes from the self proclaimed “evergreen” section: the “dark side story” (vegetables and beans with chicken in thick soy sauce, served with rice for 8.50 €) and “bamboo me baby” with beef (sautéed bamboo with chilli, garlic and stuff for 8.30 €). Both evergreens proved to be nice and average. The names promised a lot more than the actual dishes delivered. They were pleasingly large, yet lacking on the inspiration front. Don’t get me wrong: there was nothing foul about them. They were not bad. They were probably an alright quality for the money and they tasted, like, nice. A bit like what Chinese restaurants in the 80’s in Britain felt like – nice. The pho was also nice, but on an entirely different level. It was actually savoury, amusingly thick and strangely familiar. But wait a minute, familiar? Oh yes, wait a minute, it felt like facing my Polish grandmother’s chicken broth. It had this Central European gratifyingly stodgy je-ne-sais-quoi. Which is nice. And healthy. But not necessarily appropriate. A pho is actually a fairly refined soup. The broth should not be heavy and should allow a light mixture of different flavours to toy with one’s sense of taste. So again, nice, but this was one niceness gone too far.

At the end of the day, Chez Dang is not bad. The ambiance is accommodating, the service is excellent and the pricing is perfect. And the food? It wasn’t bad. It was rather just… nice.

Overall Mark:

Chez Dang

Friedelstraße 31, 12047 Berlin
www.chez-dang.com


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Discovering Mitte

Chén Ché - Mitte

Could you believe I once lived in Mitte? It was over six years ago. Just around the corner from Rosenthaler Platz. Quite a few of the buildings over there had not been renovated yet and I enjoyed the romantic decrepit atmosphere. The flat was adorned with a couple of canon walls from the war, one of which forming a large crater between my room and the bathroom. Yes, it was a dump, but an exciting one of that.

Things happened in Mitte at the time. And by “things” I don’t mean a group of drunken Brits riding on a pedal powered beer bike screaming “blobby-blobby-blobby” or a bunch of Spaniards nonchalantly vomiting with a grin in front of their hostel while mumbling “Berlin, so alternative!” At the time it felt like real people lived in Mitte. Today, I am aware of the fact that some of them still exist, but I don’t know any of them anymore.

Do not get me wrong, I am not lamenting what’s happened over the years to Mitte. I whinge because that is what I do, but the tourist locust infesting Berlin’s geographic centre is not entirely negative. One big difference from the Mitte of yore is that fact things have become more international, worldlier. Six years ago - at a time when everything was still authentic – Berlin also felt more provincial. So it was time to go back to Mitte. To try and follow the zeitgeist and feel cool.

The Vietnamese tea house ChénChè (one of three partnered restaurants in Mitte) felt like the perfect choice for a zeitgeisty venue with its impressive homepage. Otherwise, its choice of location inside an inner courtyard on Rosenthaler Straße could not have proved to be any better. An inner courtyard is both intimate and secretive. Makes you think you’re special. The decor also deserves acclaim. It succeeds in combining the generically horrid Vietnamese/Japanese grand scale restaurant pomp with a touch of good taste and pleasing design. The lightning could use a bit of dimming on the edges, but otherwise it was surprisingly nice. My only disappointment was that the weather did not allow us to sit in the garden, which looked quite charming.

The menu is not overwhelmingly large, which was quite an advantage. Another thing I found quite sweet was the fact that most dishes were presented as vegetarian by default, yet possibly served with meat. From the list of eight possible starters we ordered three: Xôi Gà (sticky coconut rice, shallots, lotus root and chicken breast for 6.20 €), Hoành Thành (baked won-tons which we ordered with spicy tofu filling, 5.80 €) and Cha Giò (baked Vietnamese spring rolls with coriander dressing, ordered with pork filling, 5.80 €). The spring rolls were the only thing that was just alright. Their taste was nice, yet uninspiring and the coriander dip was too lemony to taste of anything else. Yet the other starters were just splendid. The won-tons were strangely crispy with filling that tasted of joy and the Xôi Gà was just perfect. Each of its ingredients had kept a distinct taste that created quite a splendid mix when randomly scooped out together.

Starters

Bùn Riêu

We then continued to the main courses. There are three main courses in the usual menu and three other changing dishes. We went for the Bùn Riêu (vegetable soup with tofu dumplings and rice noodles, 9.40€) and the Reistafel menu (a changing selection of dishes for 8.40 €). The soup was quite good. It was mildly spicy and was nice to eat, but it had a heaviness that felt nearly Central European. The Reistafel came with a number of various elements. It had a small bowl of Phó (Vietnamese chicken broth), which was hearty and good, but again, was so stodgy it reminded me of my grandmother’s Polish cooking. A chicken leg fried in pleasing sweet sauce greeted me from the bamboo hamper, and another dish of chicken in mild and tasty red curry was served in a plate on the other side. And then the obligatory rice and various vegetables. It was all fairly good. Nothing was too inspiring, but it was definitely pleasing. We ended the meal with a surprisingly and quirkily tasty Ché Choi Nuoc (rice balls filled with peanuts and chocolate swimming in coconut-mango sauce, 5.60 €). I usually don’t enjoy Vietnamese desserts too much, but this one was worth every Cent.

Restafel

Dessert

What can I say? The place was worth the trip to Mitte. Not only was it good, but it also provided us with some of the added values of going to the “centre”: It was the posh version of the sort of Vietnamese places you’d find in Kreuzberg. It was slightly pricier, but the difference was justified by a nice ambiance and good quality (which was exceptional in the cases of the starters and the dessert).

Overall mark:

Chen Che - Teehaus

Rosenthaler Straße 13, 10119 Berlin
http://www.chenche-berlin.de


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Jesus Loves Kimchi

Ixthys - Schöneberg

Let’s talk about the concept of a hole-in-the-wall: shops of miniscule proportions that often combine a run-down urban charm with industrously independent character. To put it more bluntly: they are family run dumps. Some people love them; others would never set foot past their mangy thresholds.

My father is a sterling example of a holes-in-the-wall-enthusiast. You can’t really blame him for it either. There is something authentically appealling about these urban grottos. Eating in a hole-in-the-wall, you realise you are in it for the food. Most people will not be there for the superb ambience generated by the fat stains, the old cutlery or the lack of space (my father might, but I hope you will allow me to politely sneer at the idea). With a hole-in-the-wall, you get the feeling you know where the food comes from – if only because you can see the kitchen behind the counter with your own eyes. And then, you know who does the cooking, sometimes you can even talk to them. It is small enough to see past the “business” character and be admitted into a family. Take a closer look and you’ll see it is a bit like paying a random grandmother to cook for you, and just like with your own grandmother, you’ll get the food directly from that battered aluminium pan into an old plate adorned by a decade-old scratch on the side.

Holes-in-the-wall can be either extremely good or extremely bad, and it is impossible to know which one it will be in advance. And then, the really good ones have a psychologial added value. Having a truly delicious meal in a grotto equals a major discovery. It makes you feel like a 2011 urban version of Christopher Columbus, sailing in the dagerous waters of a big city (because let’s face it: holes-in-the-wall are an inherently urban phenomenon), trying to immerse yourself in the local structure and culture, unlike all those lard assed tourists who just go to Starbucks’ because they know what they’ll get over there.

Berlin has less holes-in-the-wall than cities like New York or London because – let’s face it – there is no need for any. The spaces here are usually large and often affordable. Squeezing a restaurant into a lightless cell of 100 square feet is entirely unnecessary. Which was why I had to raise an eyebrow when I had walked into Ixthys, a Korean place in Schöneberg. Alright, I did not only raise an eyebrow, I was overwhelmed and did not know whether to laugh, cry or run for my life. The place was not only a classical hole-in-the-wall, but it was a missionary one at that. Ixthys is not a word in Korean, but rather the Greek name for “fish” and an early Christian symbol. The walls are completely covered with old and dirty canvases crammed with handwritten psalms and biblical texts. The small space is not unpleasant, but for a non-believer such as myself, it was nothing less than frightening (with a pinch of exotism).

The menu did not provide much relief either. The textual treasures hidden under the layers of grease referred more often to Jesus than to food. The last page was a highlight of sorts, as it started out explaining kimchi’s merits, describing to what extent the Korean cabbage dish can improve one’s health, just to recap and decide that end the end of the day, the “richest ingredient in life” was really just the love of the Lord. Yeah, right. The added value of the Christian faith was soon forgotten, as we finally found the food references. It did not take long to realise that the choice of dishes was astonishingly promising despite its being very limited. The menu was comprised of about five vegetarian and five meat dishes, and they all sounded good.

The walls...

Bulgoggi

We then ordered the Za-Chang-Myun (a noodle dish with bean sauce, pork and various vegetables, 7.50 €), the Doesi Bul-Go-Gi (pork and onions in a spicy sauce, 7.00 €) and the Bibim-Bab (a “mix it yourself” dish with beef, rice, vegetables and a fried egg, all the joy in the world for 7.50 €). The dishes came with a side of kimchi, which was very convincing (yet not as good as the one at Madang). It would probably be best to start describing the Bul-Go-Gi, which was tasty, but not too inspiring. The meat was nice, the sauce was extremely pleasing, but nothing more, really. The noodle dish was definitely a couple of notches superior. Not only was the noodle-quality superb, but the sauce was just brilliant. It was refined and exciting at the same time, with random slices of meat and vegetables to chew on (which were fine, but still secondary to that fantastic bean sauce).

Noodles

Delicious bibimbab

And then came the bibimbab. Alright, I might be biased. I believe bibimbab is one of the things Adam and Eve managed to smuggle out of the Garden of Eden and then went on to hide somewhere in Korea so that God wouldn’t find it and punish them. I think Bibimbab is pure joy and good bibimbab is a virtue. And this one was definitely good. Everything in it was just right: the meat, the vegetables, the quantity and the spicy sauce (which was served in a large, filthy jar, which was so much more pleasing than the embarrassingly small quantity seen elsewhere around here).

Needless to say, we did not stay too long. I did not mind the Christian theme as much as I was bothered by the uncomfortable chairs and the lack of basic facilities (yes, I mean the loo. For a place that offers tea on its menu, not having any toilets can be equated with crime). After a while we just had to go. And yet, I can only recommend Ixthys warmly. As far as holes-in-the-wall go, this one was just perfect, with the best possible value: good quality food for affordable prices.

Overall mark: 

Ixthys

Pallasstraße 21, 10781 Berlin
Tel: +49 (0)30 814 747 69


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