Comfort Week or Berlin's Mexican Spring

Maria Bonita - Prenzlauer Berg

Every now and then, when everyone around me allows themselves to wallow in Berlin-nostalgia about those times before Berlin became hype and rents started rising, I like thinking of my first year in Berlin. It was ex-pat paradise. Everything was new, exciting and affordable. And Berlin was good to me. The peak of that year would probably have to be my obligatory ex-pat-romantic crisis, which I – together with two friends whom we shall call Sarah and Maura – exaggerated into oblivion in 7 days of the most exhilarating self pity otherwise known as Comfort Week.

Why all three of us felt the need to seek solace in each other’s problems is beside the point. We all thought we had romantic issues that were greater than ourselves and enjoyed the drama involved in the combination of tears and ice cream. It was absolutely fantastic: we played Cowboys and Indians in the Tiergarten shooting plastic arrows at happy looking couples (while screaming “Die, Motherf%&ckers, Die! Another neurosis that will have to remain beside the point), we stuffed our face with buckets of ice cream, drank champagne in the middle of the day and decided we had to leave the country (which ended in a coach ride to Copenhagen and a hung-over half-marathon upon returning to Berlin). In one week, we did everything we wanted to without thinking of any ramifications, consequences or small hurdles in the way of acting on any of our young ex-pat whims.

This was the best of being an ex-pat in a city that offered you the cover of anonymity and the luxury of affordability. We discovered the downsides merely a week later. Maura was having a home sickness breakdown and it felt like we needed to console her with something she actually missed. Being a Southern Beauty, what she missed most was her car, apple pies and Mexican food. The latter had actually developed into an obsession. Maura would be able to work herself into rage tantrums because she had not had any guac and beans for any period of time.

So we tried to find a Mexican place. It was a mistake. Mexican restaurants in Berlin of yore were Teutonic variations on greasy meat and thick dough. None of them had ever heard of real avocados or spicy sauces. There were always mounds of Gouda and cream and a couple of bland beans on the side. If any, it only seemed to enhance Maura’s home sickness.

With these experiences etched deep into my memory, I could hardly believe it when American friends of mine recommended trying Maria Bonita on Danziger Straße, saying it was “just like in New York.” So there I went.

The place definitely looks like a typical hole-in-the-wall you would find in New York. The space is tiny and the only seating arrangements are a couple of bar stools inside or a few ramshackle picnic tables outside. The menu was one promising page of Mexican joy, the prices just right for the ambiance and for the area.

We started with a large guacamole (for 5 €, also available for half the price if you happened to crave the small version) and totopos (refried beans, 2.5 €). Both dishes were very generously served with copious amounts of corn chips. The guac was good. It was not the best one I have had in my life, but definitely the best I have tried in Berlin: made of real avocados with good seasoning. The totopos, on the other hand, were a bit dull (yet still a lot better than the usual excuse for beans you get in other so called Mexican places in Berlin).

Starters

Quesadilla de pollo

We moved on to a burrito puerco especial with extra cheese (with marinated pork, guacamole, red salsa and chipotle cream for 7 €), a veggie quesadilla (with melted cheese, sheep cheese and chipotle cream for 6 €) and a quesadilla de pollo especial (with melted cheese and tinga de pollo for 7 €). The burrito was great fun. True, it was greasy and over laden with just about everything that can be subsumed under the title “too heavy”, but isn’t that exactly the purpose of eating a burrito? It was well seasoned (albeit could use a bit more spice) and really did feel like New York (yet not like the best ones in New York and not nearly anywhere close to California or down South, let alone Mexico). The quesadillas were fun as well, but not as good as the burrito. The veggie quesadilla was one big pile of melted cheese in-your-face, which can’t be bad, but did not much taste of anything else other than melted cheese (and left you with the sick feeling you get after inflicting unnecessary levels of pain on your stomach). The chicken quesadilla was slightly better, as it had more “stuff” in it, but it was still too blandly cheesy to be truly pleasing. This being said, it probably still is the best quesadilla in town.

Veggie quesadilla

Burrito

Maria Bonita is not the best Mexican in the world. I’m not sure I’d return there any day. But at least it’s a start. I would have given a lot to have it around six years ago, and I’m sure Maura would have done the same. Having a place that serves real guacamole would have saved our little ex-pat group serious pain and tears. Nonetheless, it will have to live with mere three prints. Being (probably) the best Mexican in Berlin is not all too difficult at the moment, and most of all, it still has work to do on improving that menu. More spice and more taste are required. A wee-bit of refinement might be an idea as well.

Overall mark:

Maria Bonita (not to be confused with its spin-off venue, Maria Peligro in Kreuzberg)
Danziger Straße 33, 10435 Berlin
http://www.lasmarias.de/bonita/home.html


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Kreuzberg's Generalissimo

La Tierra Colombiana - Kreuzberg

Germany is a do-it-yourself sorta place. If you can get something done on your own with half the costs (yet maybe double the pain), why would you ever take it to a specialist? And so, every time I hand in my bike to the bike shop with a flat tire, I find myself apologising for not being able to repair it myself. In restaurants, I’ve often found myself fending off criticism along the line of “sowas hätte ich selber kochen können” – I could have cooked that myself.

To be fair, being able to cook as well as what you get at any restaurant is NOT the point. With all due humility, I am able conjure up just about anything as well – if not better – than a fair share of the places around. But going to a restaurant is not about what I could do, but rather about what someone else does for me. It is about not needing to shop for groceries, stand in the kitchen for hours, get your finger chopped off (strangely enough not something that happens to me too often), clean up and do the dishes. Someone else is supposed to do all this for me, treat me nicely and serve me brilliant food in good ambiance. Restaurants are to food like what bike shops are to bikes. If you want to slave around your bike and repair it yourself, be my guest, but isn’t it a lot nicer to pay a bit more and get someone else to get their hands dirty for you?

I don’t necessarily mind the “saving costs” concept. It has allowed me to learn how to do things myself. And yet, I often find it being one of the many root causes of the problem called Service in Berlin (or lack thereof). Because you see, if everything is so do-it-yourself friendly, then why on earth pay that extra buck for something called “service”? This way, the only thing that counts is the product, whereas friendliness and helpfulness find their way into the rubbish bin of history.

So far so good. We have all ranted about the abysmal quality of service found in Berlin and we have all braced ourselves countless numbers of times and accepted grudgingly the fact that we would never be able to change any of it. I, for once, know I have accepted the rules. I’ve stopped ranting about bad service. I just frown at horrible waitresses and cringe quietly in my seat.

And yet, what I experienced last week was far beyond the usual drab service Berliners have grown accustomed to. To be fair, and this may appear naïve to experts, I actually expected friendly and hearty service at La Terra Colombiana on Mittenwalder Straße, just between Gneisenaustraße and Mehringdamm. The place is a cross breed between a shop for South Americans who miss their dulce de leche and a small restaurant for all the rest of us. Like a fair number of venues around that area, it is situated in a basement level shop, which would be perfect for winter, but probably not the best choice for a sunny evening.

As we entered the restaurant, we were greeted by the landlady’s brisk “hola”. It did not take us long to see she reigned over her kingdom with an iron fist and after a few minutes we decided there were many similarities between her demeanour and what we had all heard of South American generals. Generalissimo did not smile, did not answer questions (“could you please tell me what bandeja paisa means?” “It is all written on the menu!”) and generally speaking – had an impatiently militaristic attitude towards the entire concept of service. It seemed to be the same case in Spanish with a group sitting at the next table. Justice be done, though, she was very professional – just not all too pleasant.

After the first service shock, we turned to scrutinise the menu, which was as promising as it was “exotic”. Even though most of the dishes were fairly simple, I soon realised Columbian cuisine was one of the few I had known absolutely nothing about. It seemed to be heavily based on meat (and heavily fried pork-belly), beans and a root called maniok. My only problem was that I had very little to compare it to.

Starters

Sancocho paisa

We started with the picada mixta (mixed starters’ platter for 12.50 €). The presentation was visually appealing and the quality was not too bad either. It contained empanadas (with and without meat) which were alright, the ubiquitous fried pork-belly, which was fine for what it was, maniok with its dip, which was interesting (maniok tastes of a mash-up between a potato and a root with more fibres than flesh) and a chorizo, which was frankly quite divine. I have rarely enjoyed eating sausage that much. The platter was a promising start.

We then continued with a sancocho paisa (a potato-based soup with chicken, plantain and maniok, 8 €) and a bandeja latina (a mixed meat platter with chunks of meat of pork, chicken and beef, pork belly and chorizo accompanied by more maniok with dip, 14.90 €). The soup was simple, but hearty and rich. The ingredients worked well together and the seasoning was thoroughly pleasing (with an overriding taste of coriander). The meat platter was a bit more disappointing. Even though we tried to ask the generalissimo whether it would be a good choice, she did not provide any information, which in its turn happened to lead to ordering a main course not all too different to the starter. The chorizo was still divine, the pork belly was still amusing, the maniok still interesting. The chunks of meat were alright, but far from exciting. For the price of just about 15 €, the quality could have been a tad more convincing.

Bandeja latina

Fig, cheese, arequipe

The dessert section was pretty manoeuvrable, as all possible desserts were based on varying combinations between three elements: fig conserve, cheese and arequipe (a sort of dulce de leche). We decided to take all three for the price of 3.90 €. The fig was sweet, the cheese was utterly tasteless and the arequipe was yummy. The mixture was fairly nice, but not very inspiring, considering all three elements had just made their way from a box directly onto the plate. I guess a Columbian ex-pat would see it differently, but as the dessert did not trigger any warm memories of places on the other side of the Atlantic, it was all less than convincing.

The bottom line: La Tierra Colombiana is a tough case for an assessment. The overall quality was not bad and the food presentation was definitely pleasing. Not being very familiar with Columbian food, it had that added value of discovering something fairly new to me. And yet, the service was problematic to say the least and the prices too high for the quality (especially the meat). It is one of these places one should check out at least once, but not necessarily return to.

Overall mark:

La Tierra Colombiana
Mittenwalder Straße 27, 10961 Berlin
www.tierra-colombiana.com


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